The New Nation - Internet Edition

Bouthaina Shaaban

IT HAS lately emerged that when Collin Powell visited the Middle East in the aftermath of invading Iraq in 2004 he asked some Arab leaders not to receive Iraqi scientists. This reveals that the Bush administration, officially, and in a predetermined way, targeted Iraqi scientists, thinkers and doctors, especially those who refused to migrate to the US.

Later on, we read in the media, that scientists who refused to move to the US and work there were physically liquidated in Iraq. The majority of Iraqi scientists refused to leave Iraq and thus they faced their imminent death. Some highly qualified Iraqi doctors were kidnapped and taken to Israel.

Although the killing of Iraqi scientists and university professors used to be shown as part and parcel of the absurd violence in Iraq, closer follow up to what is happening shows that explosions aimed first and foremost to kill a doctor, a scientist or a university professor and scores of people who happened to be nearby were killed with him.

Thus the killing of a doctor, a physicist or a chemist seems as if it happened by chance, but there was nothing coincidental in these killings. The Americans had a checklist of Iraqi scientists who should be killed; all of them are prominent in science, medicine, technology or even languages or art, music, and especially those who are renowned for their national feelings.

This has also been done in order to achieve what James Baker, the American secretary of state, then, threatened to achieve, which is "to knock Iraq back to the Middle Ages".

The news about Iraqi scientists is similar to the news of journalists and cameramen targeted in the West Bank and Gaza in Palestine.

Israel perpetrates ugly massacres against Palestinian people, killing children and women, in order to kill a cameraman or a well-known journalist, with the aim of preventing real news about these massacres from reaching people everywhere in the world.

The latest example of which is the killing of the Palestinian cameraman working for Reuters, Fadal Shana (25 years) with 19 other Palestinians in Gaza on April 16, 2008. B'Tselem movement in Israel announced next day that the cameraman may have been killed deliberately and the report emphasised that there was no violence next to him, and his camera showed fighting faraway from him and then went blank when a missile hit him.

Israel has previously tried to kill Fadal Shana in 2006 when they hit his car with a missile, but they did not hit him, but this time they did, and killed with him 19 other Palestinians including many children.

Hence, the violence and killings taking place in Iraq and Palestine are not coincidental. Both the US in Iraq, and Israel in Palestine, have checklists of the best Arab men and women they want to kill, in order to drain this nation and its ability to gather its factors of strength and compete on the international arena.

The real objective of the US invasion of Iraq is to destroy the great scientific, technological and intellectual wealth that Iraq possessed, which could have put Iraq on the same footing as the industrially advanced countries, especially as Iraq was the one Arab country that possessed great human and material resources.

Iraq could have provided an example for other Arab countries to march on the way of scientific and technological progress which is prohibited to the Arabs. Different pretexts are used in order to target Arab countries which are on the threshold of real scientific and technological achievement.

The major problem that the Arabs have in facing these devious wars which target their identity, intellect and their human and intellectual resources, is that the Arab thinkers have not devoted the necessary time and energy to study the depth and dimensions of this attack on our nation.

And thus they have not yet formulated terms of reference to deal with all aspects of this challenge facing the Arab world. Instead they deal with parts and particles of this challenge here and there, without having a clear vision of the big picture and how it should be approached comprehensively and within a reasonable timetable.

Arab reactions to what they are suffering, as a nation, are still partial and varied and far from being effective. Yet Arab cultural activities are, by and large, cross-border in nature. Hardly any week passes without an Arab cultural activity taking place in one Arab country or another.

On re-reading the news of last week alone, we see that Arab women sociologists from 12 Arab countries have met in Sousa, Tunisia. Arab cartoonists are meeting in Saudi Arabia under the banner, "Controversial Art". Abu Dhabi Commission for Culture and Heritage is organising an Arab musical festival in which the best Arab music from most Arab countries are played.

My conclusion is that despite all military and political pressures on Arab countries, all Arabs still think culturally as one nation and one people. This is the 'state' that is targeted by our enemies.

This is precisely what assassinations, and, so-called targeted killings, aim to destroy. Hence the propaganda unleashed by the US, prior to its invasion of Iraq, and the misleading Israeli propaganda, about terrorism are unfounded.

The real target of all the violence and destruction to which Arab people are subjected to, from Iraq to Palestine and Somalia to Sudan and Yemen, is the cultural, historical and civilized identity of the Arab nation under the pretext of promoting democracy and freedom.

(Dr Bouthaina Shaaban is Syria's Minister of Expatriates. A professor of English literature, she taught at Damascus University and abroad for several years, until 2002.)