Author: Badalian Vardan

PRESIDENCE DE L’UNION EUROPEENNE – RAPPROCHEMENT DE L’UE ET DE L’ARMENIE
NEWS Press
3 octobre 2006
La troïka de l’UE accueille avec satisfaction le resultat positif
des consultations avec l’Armenie sur le Plan d’Action de la Politique
europeenne de voisinage lance au mois de novembre 2005. Dans le cadre
la visite de la delegation de la troïka de l’UE en Armenie, les deux
parties ont annonce le 2 octobre qu’un accord de principe avait ete
atteint sur un texte final relatif au Plan d’action de la Politique
europeenne de voisinage.
Les actions necessaires peuvent desormais etre entreprises afin de
preparer l’adoption formelle du Plan d’action lors du prochain conseil
de cooperation EU-Armenie qui se tiendra le 14 novembre a Bruxelles. Le
Plan d’action de la Politique europeenne de voisinage est une avancee
significative du rapprochement entre l’UE et l’Armenie, il depasse la
cooperation et comprend une integration economique significative et
un approfondissement de la cooperation politique. L’UE et l’Armenie
sont determines a profiter de cette occasion pour ameliorer leurs
relations et promouvoir la prosperite, la stabilite et la securite.
Outre le Plan d’action, la delegation de la troïka de l’UE et Vartan
Oskanian, Ministre des affaires etrangères de l’Armenie, ont aborde
des questions internationales actuelles, dont les relations entre la
Georgie et la Russie, le programme nucleaire iranien et la situation
au Liban. Le conflit au Nagorny-Karabakh figurait egalement a l’ordre
du jour.
–Boundary_(ID_px6EW5Eh+rsmYzZAwbFacA)–

BENITA FERRERO-WALDNER DETECTS DANGEROUS TRENDS THE SOUTH CAUCASUS
Public Radio, Armenia
Oct 4 2006
“Dangerous trends” have emerged in the South Caucasus in the recent
months, EU Commissioner on Enlargement Benita Ferrero-Waldner told
“Turan” agency. “We see no real progress in the settlement of the
frozen conflicts and listen to rhetoric, which is not that favourable
and impacts the public opinion. These are troublesome processes for all
those persons who anticipate peaceful resolution of the conflicts. I
find also that the great expenses on armament in the South Caucasus,
where the poverty level is high even without it, is a negative trend,”
she said.
What can Brussels suggest? In response to the question, the EU
Commissioner noted that the European Union wants settlement through
negotiations. According to her, the aggravation of tension can lead
to unpredictable consequences for the region.
“In case of the Karabakh conflict the European Union stands for
the current talks in the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group. The
Neighbourhood policy is not a mechanism for prevention or resolution
of conflicts. However, by defending democracy, contacts between
people, regional cooperation, socio-economic development programs,
it is possible to shape a correct atmosphere for settlement,”
Ferrero-Waldner declared.

SOME CRITERIA ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS…
Zaman, Turkey
Oct 3 2006
As we approach the anniversary of October 3rd, taking an account of
“where Turkish-European Union relations have gone in one year” would
be a more appropriate topic for today’s article.
When the crude language and provocations in the EU report are put
together with the French president’s statements made in Yerevan a
few days ago, a trend appears for making additions to the Brussels
Copenhagen Criteria on the first anniversary of October 3rd. Rather
than one year balance sheets, examining this trend in Europe, which
is becoming more apparent every day, has finally become a necessity.
>From 1999 until Turkey’s candidacy in 2004 when a date for opening
negotiations was given, it was promised at all EU summit meetings that
Turkey would be evaluated “equally” with other candidate countries. The
EU violated this promise with its decision on December 17th, the most
discriminating decision ever presented to a candidate country. Those
saying, “You wanted a negotiations date; take it,” added a “catch”
to this decision. The “light recognition” of Cyprus was imposed
on Turkey with the Ankara Protocol. Hoping that the December 17th
decision would soften as the process advanced, we have witnessed
every critique passed becoming more serious in the process.
As if this were not enough, everyone with a voice is attempting to
implement new criteria for Turkey. Everything under the sun can be
found on the list. First, it says, “Turkey has to recognize the Greek
Sector before the end of 2006,” and also that if institutional reforms
are not made, it will be necessary to stop expansion. Of course, we
can’t understand if Commission Chairman Barroso’s words were fully
directed towards Turkey. But which country remains after he said in
regard to the Croatian issue, “As soon as they comply to the criteria,
I want them to become a member,”?
Two days ago French President Jacques Chirac added the most “damning”
condition to the “hormone-fueled” Copenhagen Criteria. When Chirac
said that Turkey should acknowledge the purported genocide for EU
membership, of course it doesn’t immediately become a condition,
but Chirac isn’t the president of Papua New Guinea. Isn’t “genocide,”
which was taken out of the report as a condition at the last minute,
going to come up stronger after Chirac’s speech? Isn’t Chirac, who has
not used the word “genocide” until now and hasn’t made a connection
between Turkey’s future membership and a “genocide” confession,
being terribly two-faced?
Even Eurlings, who indirectly added the “genocide” of Syriac-speaking
Christians and Pontus Greeks to the report, stated, “We didn’t want
something like this from either Poland or the Czech Republic.”
However, while we were glad that “genocide was removed as a
pre-condition,” he put the words, “acknowledgment of genocide is
indispensable for Turkey’s membership” into the report. This English
word, “indispensable,” means “absolutely necessary or required.” In
other words, the report says, “If Turkey doesn’t acknowledge the
genocide, it can’t become a member,” but does so in a softer tone.
Anyway, that’s why the Armenian lobby shared its satisfaction publicly.
Eurlings’ report is far removed from good intention. A report written
for a country that has begun negotiations should not attempt to
portray that country as Afghanistan. After Chirac’s statements it
is probable that the Armenian issue, just like the Cyprus issue,
will appear in EU documents on a broader basis.
Is this a plot to make Turkey slam the door and walk away?!

ERKKI TUOMIOJA: EU-TURKEY TALKS MAY LAST OVER 10 YEARS
PanARMENIAN.Net
02.10.2006 15:56 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The EU welcomes Armenia’s urge to more
democratization and hopes for the coming elections in 2007 and 2008 to
be fair and honest, Erkki Tuomioja, the Foreign Minister of Finland,
which presides the EU currently, stated in Yerevan. In his words,
the ENP provides for EU members and countries cooperating with EU in
some way, be democratic ones.
Speaking of the talks between Turkey and EU, Erkki Tuomioja noted
that the talks may last over 10 years and will be hard. “Turkey has
much to do in reforms to become a European country. EU membership is
voluntary and Turkey made its choice itself. We hope it will be able to
become a country meeting democratic requirements,” the Finnish FM said.

JACQUES CHIRAC: “I WOULD LIKE FRENCH SQUARE TO BE ALSO PEACE SQUARE” FRENCH PRESIDENT JACUES CHIRAC’S SPEECH DURING OPENING OF FRENCH SQUARE IN YEREVAN
Noyan Tapan News Agency, Armenia
Sept 30 2006
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 30, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. The Armenian
President Robert Kocharian and the French President Jacques Chirac
made speeches during the official ceremony of opening French Square
in Yerevan on September 30. Below is President Jacques Chirac’s speech
with some abridgement:
“It is with great excitement that I am familiarizing myself with the
Armenian land.
Excitement caused by the first visit of the French state’s leader to
the places bearing evidence of the birth of the world, these places
where the guardian-giant Mount Ararat is said to become a shelter
for Noah’s Ark at the end of the Deluge.
Excitement about the heroic and full of suffering history of the
Armenian people from time immemorial. From the very first it was a
Christian people true to its identity and faith. A people on whose
fate a genocide will be imprinted for ever, the genocide to which it
fell vicim under conditions of the shocks caused by World War I and
the collapse of empires.
Excitement when I think about those who experienced this tragedy and
were forced to follow the sad path of exile. When I think about all
those who turned with confidence to France as a sister in belief that
it will provide shelter and solace.
Eventually, an excitement when It remember all those who resisted
the Nazi barbarism like Misak Mnushian and his friends. France will
never forget their struggle for our freedom.
… Your national heritage treasures – Urartu antiquities,
masterpieces of Christian Armenia, manuscripts of the Matenadaran,
works of Arshil Gorky and Parajanov will be on display at the most
famous cultural centers of France. They will remind the French about
the power of the Armenian culture, its support for our civilization
and its dissemination throughout the world.
Mister President,
Dear Friends,
Responding to your invitation to pay a state visit, I first of all
want to highlight the unique links between our two peoples. I want
to stress my confidence in Armenia’s future.
Confidence in the ability of the young independent republic of an
ancient nation to build a legal state that guarantees democracy and
social freedoms and shares with us its commitment to human rights.
Confidence in the Armenian youth which has the aspiration for peace
and freedom and strives to use to the full its enthusiasm, its thirst
for justice and its enterprise.
Confidence in the ability of your state to succeed with its economic
development and confidence in its will to become a most favorable
place for investment thanks to those exceptional capabilities that
consist in the talent and cultural power of its youth.
Confidence in its ability to struggle for peace. It is a big challenge,
the most difficult one, which your country should overcome. A challenge
that Armenia can and must overcome because only a fair and lasting
peace will allow your people to realize its hopes.
I believe in peace. It was in the past that conflicts were settled by
force. The time when it was possible to instigate feuds in disregard
of peace and security is over.
It is only the dialog based on dignity and mutual respect that allows
one to look at the future in a long-term perspective.
Today those who achieve peace are the great ones – those capable
of overcoming bellicose legacies in order to open the path of
reconciliation. This is the evidence I want to present to you today
in this French Square which I would like to be a peace square as well.
Dear friends,
For the past ten years France has not spared efforts to find a solution
to the regretful Nagorno Karbakh conflict within the framework of
Minsk Group.
Today I want to believe that the time of peace has come. I want to
believe because I know the price of war. One last step has to be taken
to reach peace. A difficult step in evidence of faith in the future of
humanity. It leads against the false security of the current situation
and allows to choose the path of confident movement. This final step
can and must be taken in Yerevan and Baku because it allows to open
the horizon of light, peace and prosperity.
These are my wishes to all the Caucasian peoples.”

WAS THERE AN ISLAMIC “GENOCIDE” OF HINDUS?
Koenraad Elst
Kashmir Herald, India
Sept 28 2006
“The Partition Holocaust”: the term is frequently used in Hindu
pamphlets concerning Islam and the birth of its modern political
embodiment in the Subcontinent, the state of Pakistan. Is such language
warranted, or is it a ridicule-inviting exaggeration?
To give an idea of the context of this question, we must note that
the term “genocide” is used very loosely these days. One of the
charges by a Spanish judge against Chilean ex-dictator Pinochet,
so as to get him extradited from Great Britain in autumn 1998,
was “genocide”. This was his way of making Pinochet internationally
accountable for having killed a few Spanish citizens: alleging a crime
serious enough to overrule normal constraints based on diplomatic
immunity and national sovereignty. Yet, whatever Pinochet’s crimes,
it is simply ridiculous to charge that he ever intended to exterminate
the Spanish nation. In the current competition for victim status,
all kinds of interest groups are blatantly overbidding in order to
get their piece of the entitlement to attention and solidarity.
The Nazi Holocaust killed the majority of European Jewry (an estimated
5.1 million according to Raul Hilberg, 5.27 million according to the
Munich-based Institut fur Zeitgeschichte) and about 30% of the Jewish
people worldwide. How many victim groups can say as much? The Partition
pogroms killed hardly 0.3% of the Hindus, and though it annihilated
the Hindu presence in all the provinces of Pakistan except for parts
of Sindh and East Bengal, it did so mostly by putting the Hindus to
flight (at least seven million) rather than by killing them (probably
half a million). Likewise, the ethnic cleansing of a quarter million
Hindus from Kashmir in 1990 followed the strategy of “killing one to
expel a hundred”, which is not the same thing as killing them all;
in practice, about 1,500 were killed.
Partition featured some local massacres of genocidal type, with the
Sikhs as the most wanted victims, but in relative as well as absolute
figures, this does not match the Holocaust.
Among genocides, the Holocaust was a very special case (e.g. the
attempt to carry it out in secrecy is unique), and it serves no
good purpose to blur that specificity by extending the term to all
genocides in general. The term “Holocaust”, though first used in a
genocidal sense to describe the Armenian genocide of 1915, is now
in effect synonymous with the specifically Jewish experience at the
hands of the Nazis in 1941-45. But does even the more general term
“genocide” apply to what Hinduism suffered at the hands of Islam?
Complete genocide “Genocide” means the intentional attempt
to destroy an ethnic community, or by extension any community
constituted by bonds of kinship, of common religion or ideology,
of common socio-economic position, or of common race. The pure form
is the complete extermination of every man, woman and child of the
group. Examples include the complete extermination of the native
Tasmanians and many Amerindian nations from Patagonia to Canada by
European settlers in the 16th-19th century. The most notorious attempt
was the Nazi “final solution of the Jewish question” in 1941-45. In
April-May 1994, Hutu militias in Rwanda went about slaughtering the
Tutsi minority, killing ca. 800,000, in anticipation of the conquest
of their country by a Uganda-based Tutsi army. Though improvised
and executed with primitive weapons, the Rwandan genocide made more
victims per day than the Holocaust.
Hindus suffered such attempted extermination in East Bengal in 1971,
when the Pakistani Army killed 1 to 3 million people, with Hindus
as their most wanted target. This fact is strictly ignored in most
writing about Hindu-Muslim relations, in spite (or rather because)
of its serious implication that even the lowest estimate of the Hindu
death toll in 1971 makes Hindus by far the most numerous victims of
Hindu-Muslim violence in the post-colonial period. It is significant
that no serious count or religion-wise breakdown of the death toll has
been attempted: the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi ruling classes
all agree that this would feed Hindu grievances against Muslims.
Nandan Vyas (“Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan”, Young India, January
1995) has argued convincingly that the number of Hindu victims in
the 1971 genocide was approximately 2.4 million, or about 80%. In
comparing the population figures for 1961 and 1971, and taking the
observed natural growth rhythm into account, Vyas finds that the Hindu
population has remained stable at 9.5 million when it should have
increased to nearly 13 million (13.23 million if the same growth rhythm
were assumed for Hindus as for Muslims). Of the missing 3.5 million
people (if not more), 1.1 million can be explained: it is the number
of Hindu refugees settled in India prior to the genocide. The Hindu
refugees at the time of the genocide, about 8 million, all went back
after the ordeal, partly because the Indian government forced them
to it, partly because the new state of Bangladesh was conceived as a
secular state; the trickle of Hindu refugees into India only resumed
in 1974, when the first steps towards islamization of the polity were
taken. This leaves 2.4 million missing Hindus to be explained. Taking
into account a number of Hindu children born to refugees in India
rather than in Bangladesh, and a possible settlement of 1971 refugees
in India, it is fair to estimate the disappeared Hindus at about
2 million.
While India-watchers wax indignant about communal riots in India
killing up to 20,000 people since 1948, allegedly in a proportion
of three Muslims to one Hindu, the best-kept secret of the
post-Independence Hindu-Muslim conflict is that in the subcontinent
as a whole, the overwhelming majority of the victims have been
Hindus. Even apart from the 1971 genocide, “ordinary” pogroms in East
Pakistan in 1950 alone killed more Hindus than the total number of
riot victims in India since 1948.
Selective genocide A second, less extreme type of genocide consists
in killing a sufficient number who form the backbone of the group’s
collective identity, and assimilating the leaderless masses into
the dominant community. This has been the Chinese policy in Tibet,
killing over a million Tibetans while assimilating the survivors into
Chinese culture by flooding their country with Chinese settlers. It
was also Stalin’s policy in eastern Poland and the Baltic states
after they fell into his hands under the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact,
exemplified by the massacre of thousands of Polish army officers in
Katyn. Stalin’s policies combining murder of the elites, deportation
of entire ethnic groups and ruthless oppression of the survivors was
prefigured in antiquity by the Assyrians, whose deportation of the
ten northern (now “lost”) tribes of Israel is attested in the Bible.
During the Islamic conquests in India, it was a typical policy to
single out the Brahmins for slaughter, after the Hindu warrior class
had been bled on the battlefield. Even the Portuguese in Malabar
and Goa followed this policy in the 16th century, as can be deduced
from Hindu-Portuguese treaty clauses prohibiting the Portuguese from
killing Brahmins.
In antiquity, such partial genocide typically targeted the men for
slaughter and the women and children for slavery or concubinage.
Thus, in 416 BCE, the Athenians were angered at the Melians’ reluctance
to join the war against Sparta, and to set an example for other client
states, Athens had Melos repopulated with Athenian colonists after
killing its men and enslaving its women. Another example would be the
slaughter of the Jews of Medina by Mohammed in 626 CE: after expelling
two Jewish tribes, the third one, the Banu Quraiza, were exterminated:
all the ca. 700 men were beheaded, while the women and children were
sold into slavery, with the Prophet keeping the most beautiful woman
as his concubine (she refused to marry him).
Hindus too experienced this treatment at the hands of Islamic
conquerors, e.g. when Mohammed bin Qasim conquered the lower Indus
basin in 712 CE. Thus, in Multan, according to the Chach-Nama, “six
thousand warriors were put to death, and all their relations and
dependents were taken as slaves”. This is why Rajput women committed
mass suicide to save their honour in the face of the imminent entry of
victorious Muslim armies, e.g. 8,000 women immolated themselves during
Akbar’s capture of Chittorgarh in 1568 (where this most enlightened
ruler also killed 30,000 non-combatants). During the Partition pogroms
and the East Bengali genocide, mass rape of Hindu women after the
slaughter of their fathers and husbands was a frequent event.
At this point, however, we should not overlook a puzzling episode in
Hindu legend which describes a similar behaviour by a Hindu conqueror:
Parashurama, deified as the 6th incarnation of Vishnu, killed all the
adult male Kshatriyas for several generations, until only women were
left, and then had Brahmins father a new generation upon them. Just
a story, or reference to a historic genocide?
Genocide in the Bible For full-blooded genocide, however, the book
to consult is the Bible, which describes cases of both partial
and complete genocide. The first modest attempt was the killing by
Jacob’s sons of all the males in the Canaanite tribe of Shekhem, the
fiance of their own sister Dina. The motive was pride of pedigree:
having immigrated from the civilizational centre of Ur in Mesopotamia,
Abraham’s tribe refused all intermarriage with the native people of
Canaan (thus, Rebecca favoured Jacob over Esau because Jacob married
his nieces while Esau married local women).
Full-scale genocide was ordered by God, and executed by his faithful,
during the conquest of Canaan by Moses and Joshua. In the defeated
cities outside the Promised Land, they had to kill all the men but
keep the women as slaves or concubines. Inside the Promised Land,
by contrast, the conquerors were ordered to kill every single man,
woman and child. All the Canaanites and Amalekites were killed. Here,
the stated reason was that God wanted to prevent the coexistence of
His people with Pagans, which would result in religious syncretism
and the restoration of polytheism.
As we only have a literary record of this genocide, liberal theologians
uncomfortable with a genocidal God have argued that this Canaanite
genocide was only fiction. To be sure, genocide fiction exists,
e.g. the Biblical story that the Egyptians had all newborn male
Israelites killed is inconsistent with all other data in the Biblical
narrative itself (as well as unattested in the numerous and detailed
Egyptian inscriptions), and apparently only served to underpin the
story of Moses’ arrival in the Pharaoh’s court in a basket on the
river, a story modelled on the then-popular life story of Sargon
of Akkad. Yet, the narrative of the conquest of Canaan is full of
military detail uncommon in fiction; unlike other parts of the Bible,
it is almost without any miracles, factual through and through.
And even if we suppose that the story is fictional, what would it
say about the editors that they attributed genocidal intentions and
injunctions to their God? If He was non-genocidal and good in reality,
why turn him into a genocidal and prima facie evil Being? On balance,
it is slightly more comforting to accept that the Bible editors
described a genocide because they wanted to be truthful and relate real
events. After all, the great and outstanding thing about the Bible
narrative is its realism, its refusal to idealize its heroes. We get
to see Jacob deceiving Isaac and Esau, then Laban deceiving Jacob;
David’s heroism and ingenuity in battle, but also his treachery
in making Bathseba his own, and later his descent into senility;
Salomon’s palace intrigues in the war of succession along with his
pearls of wisdom. Against that background, it would be inconsistent
to censor the Canaanite genocide as merely a fictional interpolation.
Indirect genocide A third type of genocide consists in preventing
procreation among a targeted population. Till recently, it was US
policy to promote sterilization among Native American women, even
applying it secretly during postnatal care or other operations. The
Tibetans too have been subjected to this treatment. In the Muslim
world, male slaves were often castrated, which partly explains why
Iraq has no Black population even though it once had hundreds of
thousands of Black slaves. The practice also existed in India on
a smaller scale, though the much-maligned Moghul emperor Aurangzeb
tried to put an end to it, mainly because eunuchs brought endless
corruption in the court. The hijra community is a left-over of this
Islamic institution (in ancient India, harems were tended by old men
or naturally napunsak/impotent men, tested by having to spend the
night with a prostitute without showing signs of virile excitement).
A fourth type of genocide is when mass killing takes place
unintentionally, as collateral damage of foolish policies, e.g.
Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward inducing the greatest man-made mass
starvation killing 20 million or more, or the British war requisitions
causing the Bengal famine of 1943 killing some 3 million; or as
collateral damage of other forms of oppression. Unlike the deliberate
genocide of Native Americans in parts of the USA or Argentina, the
death of millions of Natives in Central America after the first
Spanish conquests was at least partly the unintended side-effect
of the hardships of forced labour and the contact with new diseases
brought by the Europeans. In contrast with Nazi and Soviet work camps,
where forced labour had the dual purpose of economic profit and a slow
but sure death of the inmates, there is no evidence that the Spanish
wanted their Native labourers to die. After all, their replacement
with African slaves required a large extra investment.
The Atlantic slave trade itself caused mass death among the transported
slaves, just as in the already long-standing Arab slave trade, but
it is obvious that purely for the sake of profit, the slave-traders
preferred as many slaves as possible to arrive at the slave markets
alive. Likewise, the Christian c.q. Islamic contempt for Pagans made
them rather careless with the lives of Native Americans, Africans
or Hindus, so that millions of them were killed, and yet this was
not deliberate genocide. Of course they wanted to annihilate Pagan
religions like Hinduism, but in principle, the missionary religions
wished to convert the unbelievers, and preferred not to kill them
unless this was necessary for establishing the power of the True Faith.
That is why the mass killing of Hindus by Muslims rarely took place
in peacetime, but typically in the fervour immediately following
military victories, e.g. the fall of the metropolis of Vijayanagar in
1565 was “celebrated” with a general massacre and arson. Once Muslim
power was established, Muslim rulers sought to exploit and humiliate
rather than kill the Hindus, and discourage rebellion by making
some sort of compromise. Not that peacetime was all that peaceful,
for as Fernand Braudel wrote in A History of Civilizations (Penguin
1988/1963, p.232-236), Islamic rule in India as a “colonial experiment”
was “extremely violent”, and “the Muslims could not rule the country
except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm — burnings, summary
executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu
temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion there were
forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly
and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid
waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves.”
Though all these small acts of terror added up to a death toll of
genocidal proportions, no organized genocide of the Holocaust type
took place. One constraint on Muslim zeal for Holy War was the
endemic inter-Muslim warfare and intrigue (no history of a royal
house was bloodier than that of the Delhi Sultanate 1206-1525),
another the prevalence of the Hanifite school of Islamic law in
India. This is the only one among the four law schools in Sunni Islam
which allows Pagans to subsist as zimmis, dis-empowered third-class
citizens paying a special tax for the favour of being tolerated; the
other three schools of jurisprudence ruled that Pagans, as opposed to
Christians and Jews, had to be given a choice between Islam and death.
Staggering numbers also died as collateral damage of the deliberate
impoverishment by Sultans like Alauddin Khilji and Jahangir. As
Braudel put it: “The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one
catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics
capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was
the constant counterpart of the conquerors’ opulence.”
Genocide by any other name In some cases, terminological purists
object to mass murder being described as “genocide”, viz. when it
targets groups defined by other criteria than ethnicity. Stalin’s
“genocide” through organized famine in Ukraine killed some 7 million
people (lowest estimate is 4 million) in 1931-33, the largest-ever
deliberate mass murder in peacetime, but its victims were targeted
because of their economic and political positions, not because of their
nationhood. Though it makes no difference to the victims, this was not
strictly genocide or “nation murder”, but “class murder”. Likewise,
the killing of perhaps two million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge
was not an attempt to destroy the Cambodian nation; it was rather an
attempt to “purify” the nation of its bourgeois class.
The killing of large groups of ideological dissenters is a constant
in the history of the monotheistic faiths, of which Marxism has
been termed a modern offshoot, starting with the killing of some
polytheistic priests by Pharaoh Akhenaton and, shortly after, the
treacherous killing of 3,000 worshippers of the Golden Calf by Moses
(they had been encouraged to come out in the open by Moses’ brother
Aaron, not unlike Chairman Mao’s “hundred flowers” campaign which
encouraged dissenters to speak freely, all the better to eliminate
them later). Mass killing accompanied the christianization of Saxony
by Charlemagne (ca. 800 CE) and of East Prussia by the Teutonic
Knights (13th century). In 1209-29, French Catholics massacred the
heretical Cathars. Wars between Muslims and Christians, and between
Catholics and Protestants, killed millions both in deliberate
massacres and as collateral damage, e.g. seven million Germans in
1618-48. Though the Turkish government which ordered the killing of
a million Armenians in 1915 was motivated by a mixture of purely
military, secular-nationalistic and Islamic considerations, the
fervour with which the local Turks and Kurds participated in the
slaughter was clearly due to their Islamic conditioning of hatred
against non-Muslims.
This ideological killing could be distinguished from genocide in the
strict sense, because ethnicity was not the reason for the slaughter.
While this caution may complicate matters for the Ukrainians or
Cambodians, it does not apply to the case of Hinduism: like the Jews,
the Hindus have historically been both a religion and a nation (or at
least, casteists might argue, a conglomerate of nations). Attempts to
kill all Hindus of a given region may legitimately be termed genocide.
For its sheer magnitude in scope and death toll, coupled with its
occasional (though not continuous) intention to exterminate entire
Hindu communities, the Islamic campaign against Hinduism, which was
never fully called off since the first naval invasion in 636 CE,
can without exaggeration be termed genocide. To quote Will Durant’s
famous line: “The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest
story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is
that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order
and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by
barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.” (Story of
Civilization, vol.1, Our Oriental Heritage, New York 1972, p.459)
Hinduism’s losses There is no official estimate of the total death
toll of Hindus at the hands of Islam. A first glance at important
testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that, over 13 centuries and
a territory as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily
killed more Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha
lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India
(1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a
minimum goal whenever they felt like “punishing” the Hindus; and they
were only a third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took
place during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca. 1000 CE); during the
actual conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants
(1192 ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Moghuls
(1526-1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants
by comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population
declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard
to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did
to India is yet to start in right earnest.
Note that attempts are made to deny this history. In Indian schoolbooks
and the media, an idyllic picture of Hindu-Muslim harmony in the
pre-British period is propagated in outright contradiction with
the testimony of the primary sources. Like Holocaust denial, this
propaganda can be called negationism. The really daring negationists
don’t just deny the crimes against Hindus, they invert the picture and
blame the Hindus themselves. Thus, it is routinely alleged that Hindus
persecuted and destroyed Buddhism; in reality, Buddhist monasteries
and universities flourished under Hindu rule, but their thousands of
monks were killed by Ghori and his lieutenants.
Apart from actual killing, millions of Hindus disappeared by way of
enslavement. After every conquest by a Muslim invader, slave markets
in Bagdad and Samarkand were flooded with Hindus. Slaves were likely to
die of hardship, e.g. the mountain range Hindu Koh, “Indian mountain”,
was renamed Hindu Kush, “Hindu-killer”, when one cold night in the
reign of Timur Lenk (1398-99), a hundred thousand Hindu slaves died
there while on transport to Central Asia. Though Timur conquered
Delhi from another Muslim ruler, he recorded in his journal that he
made sure his pillaging soldiers spared the Muslim quarter, while in
the Hindu areas, they took “twenty slaves each”. Hindu slaves were
converted to Islam, and when their descendants gained their freedom,
they swelled the numbers of the Muslim community. It is a cruel twist
of history that the Muslims who forced Partition on India were partly
the progeny of Hindus enslaved by Islam.
Karma The Hindu notion of Karma has come under fire from Christian
and secularist polemicists as part of the current backlash against
New Age thinking. Allegedly, the doctrine of Karma implies that the
victims of the Holocaust and other massacres had deserved their fate.
A naive understanding of Karma, divorced from its Hindu context,
could indeed lead to such ideas. Worse, it could be said that the
Jews as a nation had incurred genocidal karma by the genocide which
their ancestors committed on the Canaanites. Likewise, it could be
argued that the Native Americans had it coming: recent research (by
Walter Neves from Brazil as well as by US scientists) has shown that
in ca. 8000 BC, the Mongoloid Native American populations replaced
an earlier American population closely resembling the Australian
Aborigines — the first American genocide?
More generally, if Karma explains suffering and “apparent” injustice
as a profound form of justice, a way of reaping the karmic rewards
of one’s own actions, are we not perversely justifying every injustice?
These questions should not be taken lightly. However, the Hindu
understanding of reincarnation militates against the doctrine of
genocidal “group karma” outlined above. An individual can incarnate
in any community, even in other species, and need not be reborn among
his own progeny. If Canaanites killed by the Israelites have indeed
reincarnated, some may have been Nazi camp guards and others Jewish
Holocaust victims. There is no reason to assume that the members of
today’s victim group are the reincarnated souls of the bullies of
yesteryear, returning to suffer their due punishment. That is the
difference between karma and genetics: karma is taken along by the
individual soul, not passed on in the family line.
More fundamentally, we should outgrow this childish (and in this
case, downright embarrassing) view of karma as a matter of reward
and punishment. Does the killer of a million people return a million
times as a murder victim to suffer the full measure of his deserved
punishment? Rather, karma is a law of conservation: you are reborn with
the basic pattern of desires and conditionings which characterized
you when you died last time around. The concrete experiences and
actions which shaped that pattern, however, are history: they only
survive insofar as they have shaped your psychic karma pattern,
not as a precise account of merits and demerits to be paid off by
corresponding amounts of suffering and pleasure.
One lesson to be learned from genocide history pertains to Karma,
the law of cause and effect, in a more down-to-earth sense: suffering
genocide is the karmic reward of weakness. That is one conclusion
which the Jews have drawn from their genocide experience: they created
a modern and militarily strong state. Even more importantly, they
helped foster an awareness of the history of their persecution among
their former persecutors, the Christians, which makes it unlikely
that Christians will target them again. In this respect, the Hindus
have so far failed completely. With numerous Holocaust memorials
already functioning, one more memorial is being built in Berlin by
the heirs of the perpetrators of the Holocaust; but there is not even
one memorial to the Hindu genocide, because even the victim community
doesn’t bother, let alone the perpetrators.
This different treatment of the past has implications for the future.
Thus, Israel’s nuclear programme is accepted as a matter of course,
justified by the country’s genuine security concerns; but when India,
which has equally legitimate security concerns, conducted nuclear
tests, it provoked American sanctions. If the world ignores Hindu
security concerns, one of the reasons is that Hindus have never
bothered to tell the world how many Hindus have been killed already.
Healing What should Hindus say to Muslims when they consider the record
of Islam in Hindu lands? It is first of all very important not to
allot guilt wrongly. Notions of collective or hereditary guilt should
be avoided. Today’s Muslims cannot help it that other Muslims did
certain things in 712 or 1565 or 1971. One thing they can do, however,
is to critically reread their scripture to discern the doctrinal
factors of Muslim violence against Hindus and Hinduism. Of course,
even without scriptural injunction, people get violent and wage wars;
if Mahmud Ghaznavi hadn’t come, some of the people he killed would
have died in other, non-religious conflicts. But the basic Quranic
doctrine of hatred against the unbelievers has also encouraged many
good-natured and pious people to take up the sword against Hindus
and other Pagans, not because they couldn’t control their aggressive
instincts, but because they had been told that killing unbelievers
was a meritorious act. Good people have perpetrated evil because
religious authorities had depicted it as good.
This is material for a no-nonsense dialogue between Hindus and
Muslims. But before Hindus address Muslims about this, it is imperative
that they inform themselves about this painful history.
Apart from unreflected grievances, Hindus have so far not developed
a serious critique of Islam’s doctrine and historical record. Often
practising very sentimental, un-philosophical varieties of their own
religion, most Hindus have very sketchy and distorted images of rival
religions. Thus, they say that Mohammed was an Avatar of Vishnu,
and then think that they have cleverly solved the Hindu-Muslim
conflict by flattering the Prophet (in fact, it is an insult to
basic Muslim beliefs, which reject divine incarnation, apart from
indirectly associating the Prophet with Vishnu’s incarnation as a
pig). Instead of the silly sop stories which pass as conducive to
secularism, Hindus should acquaint themselves with real history and
real religious doctrines.
Another thing which we should not forget is that Islam is ultimately
rooted in human nature. We need not believe the Muslim claim that the
Quran is of divine origin; but then it is not of diabolical origin
either, it is a human document. The Quran is in all respects the
product of a 7th-century Arab businessman vaguely acquainted with
Judeo-Christian notions of monotheism and prophetism, and the good
and evil elements in it are very human. Even its negative elements
appealed to human instincts, e.g. when Mohammed promised a share in
the booty of the caravans he robbed, numerous Arab Pagans took the
bait and joined him. The undesirable elements in Islamic doctrine
stem from human nature, and can in essence be found elsewhere as
well. Keeping that in mind, it should be possible to make a fair
evaluation of Islam’s career in India on the basis of factual history.
OP&st=D&no=138

PRESS RELEASE
Council of Europe Press Division
Ref: 540a06
Tel: +33 (0)3 88 41 25 60
Fax:+33 (0)3 88 41 39 11
[email protected]
internet:
Council of Europe empowers children to deal with both positive and
negative sides of the Internet and other new technologies
Strasbourg, 29.09.2006 – The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers
has called on member states to make information technology an integral
part of school education from an early age, to help children maximise
benefits and avoid pitfalls of the Internet and other new technologies.
The 46-member Council of Europe is taking a positive approach to deal
with harmful content on the Web, partly in response to the dangers posed
by the Internet.
Measures approved in a new Committee of Ministers’ Recommendation
< Ref=3DRec(2006)12&Sector=3DsecCM&Language= 3Dla nEnglish&Ver=3Doriginal&BackColorInte rnet=3D9999CC&BackColorIntranet=3DFFBB55& BackColorLogged=3DFFAC75> include giving children the skills to
create,
produce and distribute content in new technologies, respecting the
rights and freedoms of others while also promoting their own right to
freedom of expression.
The recommendation calls for member states to ensure that these skills
enable children to better understand and deal with questionable content,
including violence, pornography, discrimination and racism.
In addition, the forthcoming Council of Europe Pan-European Forum in
Yerevan, Armenia, on 5 and 6 October 2006 will bring together
representatives of Council of Europe member states, civil society, the
private sector, academia and the media, and other interested
organisations.
“Empowering children to use the Internet is the best filter,” said Maud
de Boer-Buquicchio, Council of Europe Deputy Secretary General, several
days ahead of the forum.
The forum will stress that filtering and labelling Internet content is
not enough to ensure that children and young people can surf the web
safely – in the exercise of their rights and freedoms, including the
freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and
ideas.
Children and young people need to be, and to feel, empowered when using
the Internet, so they can competently use its tools and services and
critically analyse Internet content and communications. By equipping
them and their educators with appropriate skills and knowledge, they
will be able to exercise their rights and freedoms fully and
responsibly, to improve their development and well-being online.
On the web:
To receive our press releases by e-mail, contact :
[email protected]
A political organisation set up in 1949, the Council of Europe works to
promote democracy and human rights continent-wide. It also develops
common responses to social, cultural and legal challenges in its 46
member states.

IRNA, Iran
Sept 28 2006
Iranian energy minister expected in Armenia today
Tehran, Sept 28, IRNA Iran-Armenia-Energy Energy Minister Parviz
Fattah is to begin a visit to Armenia today to participate in the
Iran-Armenia-Georgia trilateral meeting as well as follow up joint
border projects and a bilateral agreement for supply of electricity
to Armenia.
On the two countries’ energy cooperation, he said a third
230-kilovolt transmission line being set up by the Iranian Sanir
company in Armenia is one of their ongoing projects and is to become
operational by year-end.
Electricity networks of Iran, Armenia and Georgia will be linked in
the near future so that Iran can have greater access to international
networks through Geogria, the minister told IRNA.
Construction of a dam on their joint Aras river is another
Iran-Armenia ongoing joint project, he said, adding that talks are
underway for construction of another dam in Armenia.
The 235-km Aras river forms an international border between Iran,
Azerbaijan Republic and Armenia.

ARKADY GHUKASYAN: WE ARE READY TO RESOLVE THE CONFLICT IN A PEACEFUL WAY
Public Radio of Armenia
Sept 27 2006
NKR President Arkady Ghukasyan received the Vice-Speaker of the British
Parliament, Baroness Caroline Cox and the delegation of British and
American benefactors, who promote the accomplishment of different
humanitarian programs in Nagorno Karabakh.
NKR President’s Press Office informs that at the beginning of the
meeting Caroline Cox congratulated the authorities and people of
Nagorno Karabakh on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of declaration
of independence and noted that every time visiting Karabakh she
admires the diligence of Karabakh residents.
Arkady Ghukasyan spoke about the readiness of official Stepanakert
to resolve the Karabakh issue in a peaceful way, pointing out the
establishment of mutual trust between the parties as an important
precondition for settlement of the conflict.

had_3886.jsp#
The Left and the Jihad
Fred Halliday
8 – 9 – 2006
The left was once the principal enemy of radical Islamism. So how did
old enemies become new friends? Fred Halliday reports.
The approaching fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United
States highlights an issue much in evidence in the world today, but
one that receives too little historically-informed and critical
analysis: the relationship between militant Islamic groups and the
left.
It is evident that the attacks, and others before and since on US and
allied forces around the world, have won the Islamist groups
responsible considerable sympathy far beyond the Muslim world,
including among those vehemently opposed from a variety of ideological
perspectives to the principal manifestations of its power. It is
striking, however, that – beyond such often visceral reactions – there
are signs of a far more developed and politically articulated
accommodation in many parts of the world between Islamism as a
political force and many groups of the left.
The latter show every indication of appearing to see some combination
of al-Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbollah, Hamas, and (not least)
Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as exemplifying a new form of
international anti-imperialism that matches – even completes – their
own historic project. This putative combined movement may be in the
eyes of such leftist groups and intellectual trends hampered by “false
consciousness”, but this does not compromise the impulse to
“objectively” support or at least indulge them.
The trend is unmistakable. Thus the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez
flies to Tehran to embrace the Iranian president. London’s mayor Ken
Livingstone, and the vocal Respect party member of the British
parliament George Galloway, welcome the visit to the city of the
Egyptian cleric (and Muslim Brotherhood figurehead) Yusuf
al-Qaradawi. Many in the sectarian leftist factions (and beyond) who
marched against the impending Iraq war showed no qualms about their
alignment with radical Muslim organisations, one that has since
spiralled from a tactical cooperation to something far more
elaborated. It is fascinating to see in the publications of leftist
groups and commentators, for example, how history is being rewritten
and the language of political argument adjusted to (as it were)
accommodate this new accommodation.
The most recent manifestation of this trend arrived during the Lebanon
war of July-August 2006. The Basque country militant I witnessed who
waved a yellow Hizbollah flag at the head of a protest march is only
the tip of a much broader phenomenon. The London demonstrators against
the war saw the flourishing of many banners announcing “we are all
Hizbollah now”, and the coverage of the movement in the leftwing press
was notable for its uncritical tone.
All of this is – at least to those with historical awareness,
sceptical political intelligence, or merely a long memory –
disturbing. This is because its effect is to reinforce one of the most
pernicious and inaccurate of all political claims, and one made not by
the left but by the imperialist right. It is also one that underlies
the US-declared “war on terror” and the policies that have resulted
from 9/11: namely, that Islamism is a movement aimed against “the
west”.
This claim is a classic example of how a half-truth can be more
dangerous than an outright lie. For while it is true that Islamism in
its diverse political and violent guises is indeed opposed to the US,
to remain there omits a deeper, crucial point: that, long before the
Muslim Brotherhood, the jihadis and other Islamic militants were
attacking “imperialism”, they were attacking and killing the left –
and acting across Asia and Africa as the accomplices of the west.

A tortured history
The modern relationship of the left to militant Islamism dates to the
immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution. At that time, the
Soviet leadership was promoting an “anti-imperialist” movement in Asia
against the British, French and Dutch colonial empires, and did indeed
see militant Muslims as at least tactical allies. For example, at the
second congress of the Comintern in 1920, the Soviets showed great
interest towards the Islamist group led by Tan Malaka in Indonesia;
following the meeting, many delegates decamped to the Azeri capital of
Baku for a “Congress of the Peoples of the East”. This event, held in
an ornate opera house, became famous for its fiery appeals to the
oppressed masses of Asia and included calls by Bolshevik leaders, many
of them either Armenian or Jewish, for a jihad against the British.
A silent-film clip recently discovered by the Iranian historian Touraj
Atabaki shows the speakers excitedly appealing to the audience who
then proceed to leap up and fire their guns into the air, forcing the
speakers on the platform to run for cover. One of those who attended
the Baku conference was the American writer John Reed, author of the
classic account of the Bolshevik revolution Ten Days That Shook the
World. (On his return journey from Azerbaijan he was to die after
catching typhoid from a melon he bought on the way.)
For decades afterwards, the Soviet position on Islam was that it was,
if not inherently progressive, then at least capable of socialist
interpretation. On visits in the 1980s to the then two communist
Muslim states – the now equally-forgotten “Democratic Republic of
Afghanistan” and the “People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen” – I was
able to study the way in which secondary school textbooks, taught by
lay teachers not clerics, treated Islam as a form of early socialism.
A verse in the Qur’an stating that “water, grass and fire are common
among the people” was interpreted as an early, nomadic, form of
collective means of production; while Muslim concepts of ijma’
(consensus), zakat (charitable donation), and ‘adala (justice) were
interpreted in line with the dictates of the “non-capitalist”
road. Jihad was obviously a form of anti-imperialist struggle. A
similar alignment of Islamic tradition and modern state socialism
operated in the six Muslim republics of the Soviet Union.
Such forms of affinity were in the latter part of the 20th century
succeeded by a far clearer alignment of Islamist groups: against
communism, socialism, liberalism and all that they stood for, not
least with regard to the rights of women. In essence, Islamism – the
organised political trend, owing its modern origin to the founding of
the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, that seeks to solve modern
political problems by reference to Muslim texts – saw socialism in all
its forms as another head of the western secular hydra; it had to be
fought all the more bitterly because it had such a following in the
Arab world, in Iran and in other Muslim countries.
In a similar way to other opponents of the left (notably the European
fascist movements), Islamists learned and borrowed much from their
secular rivals: styles of anti-imperialist rhetoric, systems of social
reform, the organisation of the centralised party (a striking example
of which is Hizbollah in Lebanon, a Shi’a copy in nationalist,
organisational and military form of the Vietnamese Communist
Party). This process has continued in the modern critique of
globalisation and “cultural imperialism”.
The ferocious denunciations of “liberalism” by Ayatollah Khomeini and
his followers are a straight crib from the Stalinist handbook. Osama
bin Laden’s messages, albeit clad in Qur’anic and Arabic poetic garb,
contain a straightforward, contemporary, radical political messages:
our lands are occupied by imperialism, our rulers betray our
interests, the west is robbing our resources, we are the victim of
double standards.
The hostility of Islamism to leftwing movements, and the use of
Islamists in the cold war to fight communism and the left, deserve
careful study. A precedent was the Spanish civil war, when Francisco
Franco recruited tens of thousands of Moroccan mercenaries to fight
the Spanish republic, on the grounds that Catholicism and Islam had a
shared enemy in communism. After 1945, this tendency became more
widespread. In Egypt, up to the revolution of 1952, the communist and
Islamist movements were in often violent conflict. In the 1960s, Saudi
Arabia’s desire to oppose Nasser’s Egypt and Soviet influence in the
middle east led it to promote the World Islamic League as an
anti-socialist alliance, funded by Riyadh and backed by
Washington. King Feisal of Saudi Arabia was often quoted as seeing
communism as part of a global Jewish conspiracy and calling on his
followers to oppose it. In Morocco, the leader of the socialist party,
Oman bin Jalloun, was assassinated in 1975 by an Islamist militant.
A canvas of conflict
There are further striking cases of this backing of Islamism against
the left: Turkey, Israel/Palestine, Egypt, and Algeria among them.
In Turkey in the 1970s, an unstable government beset by challenges
from armed leftwing groups encouraged both the forces of the
nationalist right (the “Grey Wolves”) and Islamists, and indulged the
assassination of leftwing intellectuals. In Palestine, the Israeli
authorities, concerned to counter the influence of al-Fatah in the
West Bank in the late 1970s, granted permission for educational,
charitable and other organisations (linked in large part to the Muslim
Brotherhood) in ways that helped nurtured the emergence of Hamas in
1987; Israeli thus did not create Hamas, but it did facilitate its
early growth. In Algeria too, factions within the ruling
national-liberation movement (FLN) were in league with the underground
Islamist group, the National Salvation Front; its French initials,
FIS, gave rise to the observation that the FIS are le fils (“the son”)
of the FLN.
In Egypt, from the death of Nasser in 1970 onwards, the regimes of
Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak actively encouraged the Islamisation of
society, in part against armed Islamist groups, but also to counter
the influence of the socialist left. This was a project in which many
formerly secular Egyptian intellectuals colluded, in an often
theatrical embrace of Islam, tradition and cultural nationalism.
The trend culminated in the 1990s with a campaign to silence left and
independent liberal voices: the writer Farag Fouda, who had called for
the modernisation of Islam, was assassinated in 1992; Naguib Mahfouz,
the Nobel prize-winning author, was stabbed and nearly killed in 1994
(allegedly for his open and flexible attitude to religion in his Cairo
novels); the writer and philosopher Nasser Abu Zeid, who had dared to
apply to the Qur’an and other classical Islamic texts the techniques
of historical and literary criticism practised elsewhere in the world,
was sent death-threats before being driven into exile in 1995.
There were even worse confrontations between Islamism and those of a
socialist and secular liberal persuasion. The National Islamic Front
in Sudan, a conspiratorial group that explicitly modelled itself on
Leninist forms of organisation, took power in 1989 and proceeded to
arrest, torture and kill members of the communist party, all this at a
time when playing host to Osama bin Laden in Khartoum.
In Yemen, after the partial unification of the military north and
socialist south in May 1990, the regime allowed assassins of the
Islamist movement to kill dozens of socialist party members and army
officers. This process precipitated the civil war of 1994, in which
armed Islamist factions linked by ideology and political ties to bin
Laden (most prominently the Abyan army) fought side-by-side with the
regular army of the north to crush the socialist south. This was an
echo of the war in Dhofar province in the neighbouring Arabian state
of Oman during 1970s, when anti-communist government published
propaganda by the British-officered intelligence corps denouncing the
leftwing rebels for allowing men to have only one wife, and promised
them four if they came over to the government side.
The politics of blood
The historical cycle of enmity reached an even greater pitch in two
other countries where the anti-communist and rightwing orientation of
the Islamists became clear. The first, little noticed in the context
of Islamism, was the crushing of the left in Indonesia in 1965. There
the independent and “anti-imperialist” regime of President Sukarno was
supported by the communist party (PKI), the largest in non-communist
Asia.
After a conflict within the military itself, a rightwing coup backed
by the United States seized power and proceeded to crush the left. In
rural Java especially, the new power was enthusiastically supported by
Islamists, led by the Nahdat ul-Islam grouping. A convergence between
the anti-communism of the military and the Islamists was one of the
factors in the rampant orgy of killing which took the lives of up to a
million people. The impact of this event was enormous, both for
Indonesia itself and the balance of forces in southeast Asia at a time
when the struggle in Vietnam was about to escalate.
The second country, Afghanistan, also had an outcome of great
significance for the cold war as a whole. During the Soviet occupation
of the 1980s, the most fanatical Islamist groups – funded by the CIA,
Pakistan and the Saudis to overthrow the communist government in Kabul
– were killing women teachers, bombing schools and forcing women back
into the home in the areas they controlled.
Such enemies led the first leader of communist Afghanistan, Nur
Mohammad Taraki, to refer to the opposition as ikhwan i shayatin (“the
satanic brotherhood”, a play on “Muslim Brotherhood”). Bin Laden
himself, in both his 1980s and post-1996 periods in Afghanistan,
played a particularly active role not just in fighting Afghan
communists, but also in killing Shi’a, who were, in the sectarian
worldview of Saudi fundamentalism, seen as akin to communists. The
consequences of this policy for the Arab and Muslim worlds, and for
the world as a whole, were evident from the early 1990s onwards. It
took the events of the clear morning of 11 September 2001 for them to
penetrate into the global consciousness.
The true and the false
This melancholy history must be supplemented by attention to what is
actually happening in countries, or parts of countries, where
Islamists are influential and gaining ground. The reactionary (the
word is used advisedly) nature of much of their programme on women,
free speech, the rights of gays and other minorities is evident.
There is also a mindset of anti-Jewish prejudice that is riven with
racism and religious obscurantism. Only a few in the west noted what
many in the Islamic world will have at once understood, that one of
the most destructive missiles fired by Hizbollah into Israel bore the
name “Khaibar” – not a benign reference to the pass between
Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the name of a victorious battle fought
against the Jews by the Prophet Mohammad in the 7th century. Here it
is worth recalling the saying of the German socialist leader Bebel,
that anti-semitism is “the socialism of fools”. How many on the left
are tolerant if not actively complicit in this foolery today is a
painful question to ask.
The habit of categorising radical Islamist groups and their ideology
as “fascist” is unnecessary as well as careless, since the many
differences with that European model make the comparison redundant. It
does not need slogans to understand that the Islamist programme,
ideology and record are diametrically opposed to the left – that is,
the left that has existed on the principles founded on and descended
from classical socialism, the Enlightenment, the values of the
revolutions of 1798 and 1848, and generations of experience. The
modern embodiments of this left have no need of the “false
consciousness” that drives so many so-called leftists into the arms of
jihadis.
Fred Halliday is professor of international relations at the LSE, and
visiting professor at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies
(IBEI). His books include Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (IB
Tauris, 2003) and 100 Myths About the Middle East (Saqi, 2005).
Copyright © Fred Halliday, Published by openDemocracy Ltd.