The New Nation - Internet Edition

Sarkozy sells a mirage

Hassan Nafaa

The heads of state of the European Union and of southern Mediterranean countries are scheduled to meet in Paris on 13 and 14 July. Their summit is expected to conclude with the proclamation of the establishment of a new international grouping called the "Union for the Mediterranean". It is perhaps premature to predict whether the new entity will be able to produce a qualitative shift in a historically shaky relationship between the two banks of the Mediterranean and thereby succeed where the "Barcelona process", set into motion in 1995, has failed so far. However, it is possible to note some opportunities for the new project and some obstacles that may mar its path. In order to identify these we must bear in mind some important facts as follows.

Sarkozy's original project, which was to be called the Mediterranean Union, was to create a more powerful institutional framework than the so-called Barcelona process. Its membership was to be restricted to countries bordering the Mediterranean. The project was a product of Sarkozy's European policy that aims, firstly, to halt the expansion of the EU in order to preserve its Christian identity, which translates into keeping Turkey out of it, and, secondly, to position France so it can play a leading role in a European Union that is more powerful and effective politically and militarily and less bureaucratically cumbersome at the social and economic levels. Sarkozy believes that France's leadership of a new formula-partnership between Mediterranean countries-will help it achieve these two aims.

France's European policy under Sarkozy stems from a broader vision of change that seeks to accomplish three interrelated domestic aims. The first is to restructure the French governing system, seeking inspiration from the spirit and mechanisms of the Anglo-Saxon model, in order to render it more efficient and effective. The second is to seal France's borders against illegal immigrants, especially those coming from the Arab and Islamic worlds, only cracking the doors open again to allow in the select few who meet France's demographic and economic needs. The third is to habilitate foreigners living in France to the French cultural and value systems, beneath the banner, "France: love it or leave it!" Meanwhile, at the foreign policy level, Sarkozy wants to contribute to forming a new global order in which France plays a more prominent and effective role. Towards this end, he wants to eliminate the chronic strain in France's relationship with the US and work towards the construction of a permanent strategic alliance between the two countries. He also wants France to resume its place in the NATO military structures from which it withdrew in 1966.

Many regional and international forces, notably the US, Israel and Turkey, managed to introduce fundamental modifications into Sarkozy's original project and to turn it from the "Mediterranean Union" into the "Union for the Mediterranean". There is a big difference between the two. Germany expressed its reservations on what it felt would give France a larger margin of manoeuvrability and increased influence in the EU at the expense of its own influence. The US exerted considerable pressure in the interest of linking the new project to NATO as a way of guaranteeing that it would not serve as leverage for any independent European tendencies. Turkey, for its part, wanted assurances that the project would not become an alternative or an obstacle to its membership in the EU, while Israel insisted that it become an instrument to promote normalisation, free-of-charge, between Israel and Arab and Islamic countries.

The interplay between the American, German, Israeli and Turkish positions created a platform of common interest in preventing the rise of a strong and independent Mediterranean organisation. Such a prospect has now been successfully forestalled through expanding the membership of the Union for the Mediterranean to include all EU countries instead of just the countries of the Mediterranean basin and through the adoption of an institutional framework that is not much different from that of the Barcelona process. The inclusion of non- Mediterranean countries guarantees a stronger linkage with NATO strategy and the Barcelona-type formula helps assuage Turkey's apprehensions. Because Turkey is an important and active member of NATO, all parties were keen to assure it that the doors to EU membership would remain open for fear that any signal to the contrary would push Ankara closer to the Arab and Islamic worlds.

Since the newly restructured project was announced, Sarkozy has scrambled to reconcile a host of contradictions. He has pleaded that closer ties between Paris and Washington will not come at the expense of France's autonomous will and that the purpose of this policy is to increase France's ability to influence the US and not the other way around. In a similar vein, he has argued that closer ties with Israel will not come at the expense of Arab interests and, in fact, will help France become more effective in supporting efforts to reach a just solution to the Middle East conflict. Likewise, France's resumption of its place in the NATO military hierarchy does not imply surrender to American ambitions of global hegemony. Rather, it is an avenue towards building a multi-polar world order in which Europe, under France's leadership, will be a partner with, not subordinate to, Washington.

The French president attempted to prove his ability to reconcile opposites on various occasions offered by the recent spurt in diplomatic activity in the Middle East. His re-engagement with Syria, he said, was instrumental to the conclusion of the Doha agreement that brought an end to the Lebanese crisis, with the blessing of the Arab League and without bringing France's policy into conflict with American political objectives. His subsequent invitation of Bashar Al-Assad to Paris to take part in the forthcoming summit was portrayed as a reward to the Syrian president for his cooperation on the Lebanese question, even though Al-Assad's presence in Paris will probably serve Sarkozy more than the other way around. Sarkozy's speech to the Knesset certainly struck a different tone to that of Bush's speech before the same assembly on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel. The French president stressed the need for Israel to halt all settlement activity on the grounds that settlement expansion obstructs the search for an acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also rejected Israel's claim to Jerusalem as its eternal capital, stating that this city must be shared with the Palestinians.

However, the Arabs should not be taken in by Sarkozy's seemingly accommodating words and actions, which I believe reflect more his willingness to play the good guy to the US-Israeli bad guy than they do an independent foreign policy line. That Paris agreed to change the Mediterranean Union into the Union for the Mediterranean and to offer guarantees that the new entity would not become a means to obstruct Turkey's acceptance into the EU can only have one meaning: France has opted for a strategy that prioritises NATO even over the EU, at least for the time being. In fact, some analysts have suggested that the Union for the Mediterranean, as it is now styled, is little more than the European version of the American project for a "Greater Middle East".

As for Sarkozy's remarks on the Palestinian-Israeli question, they are little more than a gesture. They are not going to halt Israeli settlement expansion or compel Israel to withdraw from East Jerusalem preparatory to declaring it the capital of an independent Palestinian state. What such gestures might do, on the other hand, is facilitate the accomplishment of an Israeli goal, which is to convert the Union for the Mediterranean into a vehicle for promoting normalisation with Arab and Islamic countries without Israel having to give anything in return. When one considers that the French stance on Iran is almost more hawkish than the American one, and closer to the Israeli stance, one is left with little room for doubt about France's true motives. This also puts French rapprochement with Syria in a clearer light. It is a bid to wean Damascus away from Tehran, preparatory to the implementation of plans for a military strike against Iran, or at least to tighten the diplomatic embargo against Tehran and isolate it regionally.

Whatever one might say about Sarkozy's Mediterranean project, one cannot escape the fact that the way the Europeans dealt with it and the way the Arabs dealt with it could not have been more different. Whereas the European interplay gave rise to a convergence of sometimes conflicting interests, the Arabs have been unable to formulate a common stance on a project that addresses them, first and foremost, and that is about to be launched in their direction from Paris on the occasion of France's commemoration of the fall of the Bastille. We know that President Mubarak did not attend a meeting of the Mediterranean Forum held recently in Tripoli and in which Colonel Gaddafi proclaimed, with his customary histrionics, that the Union for the Mediterranean was "an insult to the Arabs and Africans". The Algerian president voiced similar reservations on the same occasion, albeit in a different style. However, such objections or reservations have done nothing to alter the progress of the Sarkozy project. Moreover, it is not unlikely that all the Arab countries concerned will attend the summit in Paris, each, of course, for reasons of its own and in pursuit of its own agenda, since there is no "Arab agenda" or Arab order capable of setting certain bounds for Arab relations with the rest of the world.

So, I believe it will be quite easy for Sarkozy to sell to the Arabs a French role that stands apart from the American role on the surface only. History teaches us that the French can only play a major part in world affairs if they can operate independently from the Americans. The bipolar order created a window of opportunity for De Gaule to assert a distinct and independent French policy. Such an opportunity does not present itself now, and even if it did one doubts that Sarkozy would seize it in view of how closely he has linked his country with American interests and how committed he is to American and Israeli points of view. Of course, Sarkozy may be driven by his love of the spotlight to do something sensational such as arranging for a "historic" handshake between Olmert and Al-Assad in Paris. But the handshake, if it takes place, will alter nothing on the ground and will only benefit Olmert and Sarkozy.

Arab governments should, therefore, realise that they will be unable to score an achievement of any sort, whether in the negotiating process with Israel or in their relations with governments and regional organisations abroad, unless they put their own house in order, which entails reconciling Palestinian factions first, and then mending other Arab fences. Until they do this in a way that permits Arab governments to act in coordination with each other, no one will take the Arab world seriously. Meanwhile, given the Arabs' current state of fragmentation, Sarkozy will probably be able to sell them his Union for the Mediterranean, which they will grasp only to discover it is a mirage.

(Source: Al-Ahram weekly. The writer is secretary-general of the Arab Thought Forum.)

Confessions of a British spy -IV

When I arrived in Basra, I settled in a mosque. The imam of the mosque was a Sunnite person of Arabic origin named Shaikh 'Umar Tai. When I met him I began to chat with him. Yet he suspected me at the very beginning and subjected me to a shower of questions. I managed to survive this dangerous chat as follows: "I am from Turkey's Igdir region. I was a disciple of Ahmad Effendi of Istanbul. I worked for a carpenter named Khalid (Halid)." I gave him some information about Turkey, which I had acquired during my stay there. Also, I said a few sentences in Turkish. The imam made an eye signal to one of the people there and asked him if I spoke Turkish correctly. The answer was positive. Having convinced the imam, I was very happy. Yet I was wrong. For a few days later, I saw to my disappointment that the imam suspected that I was a Turkish spy. Afterwards, I found out that there was some disagreement and hostility between him and the governor appointed by the (Ottoman) Sultan.

Having been compelled to leave Shaikh 'Umar Effendi's mosque, I rented a room in an inn for travellers and foreigners and moved there. The owner of the inn was an idiot named Murshid Effendi. Every morning he would disturb me by knocking hard at my door to wake me up as soon as the adhan for morning prayer was called. I had to obey him. So I would get up and perform the morning prayer. Then he would say, "You shall read Qur'an-al karim after morning prayer." When I told him that it was not fard (an act commanded by Islam) to read Qur'an al-karim and asked him why he should insist so much, he would answer, "Sleeping at this time of day will bring poverty and misfortune to the inn and the inmates." I had to carry out this command of his. For he said otherwise he would send me out of the inn. Therefore, as soon as the adhan was called, I would perform morning prayer and then read Qur'an al-karim for one hour.

One day Murshid Effendi came to me and said, "Since you rented this room misfortunes have been befalling me. I put it down to your ominous ness. For you are single. Being single (unmarried) portends ill omen. You shall either get married or leave the inn." I told him I did not have property enough to get married. I could not tell him what I had told Ahmad Effendi. For Murshid Effendi was the kind of person who would undress me and examine my genitals to see whether I was telling the truth.

When I said so, Murshid Effendi reproved me, saying, "What a weak belief you have! Haven't you read Allah's ayat purporting, If they are poor, Allahu ta'ala will make them rich with His kindness'? (4)" I was stupefied. At last I said, "All right, I shall get married. But are you ready to provide the necessary money? Or can you find a girl who will cost me little?"

After reflecting for a while, Murshid Effendi said, "I don't care! Either get married by the beginning of Rajab month, or leave the inn." There were only twenty-five days before the beginning of the month of Rajab.

Incidentally, let me mention the Arabic months; Muharram, Safar, Rabi'ul-awwal, Rabi'ul-akhir, Jemaziy-ul-awwal, Jemaziy-ul-akhir, Rajab, Shaban, Ramadan, Shawwal, Zilqada, Zilhijja. Their months are neither more than thirty days, nor below twenty-nine. They are based on lunar calculations.

Taking a job as an assistant to a carpenter, I left Murshid Effendi's inn. We made an agreement on a very low wage, but my lodging and food were to be at the employer's expense. I moved my belongings to the carpenter's shop well before the month of Rajab. The carpenter was a manly person. He treated me as if I were his son. He was a Shi'ite from Khorassan, Iran, and his name was Abd-ur- Rida. Taking the advantage of his company, I began to learn Persian. Every afternoon Iranian Shi'ites would meet at his place and talk on various subjects from politics to economy. Most often than not they would speak ill of their own government and also of the Khalifa in Istanbul. Whenever a stranger came in they would change the subject and begin to talk on personal matters.

They trusted me very much. However, as I found out later on, they thought I was an Azarbaijani because I spoke Turkish.

From time to time a young man would call at our carpenter's shop. His attirement was that of a student doing scientific research, and he understood Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. His name was Muhammad bin Abd-ul-wahhab Najdi. This youngster was an extremely rude and very nervous person. While abusing the Ottoman government very much, he would never speak ill of the Iranian government. The common ground which made him and the shop-owner Abd-ur-Rida so friendly was that both were inimical towards the Khalifa in Istanbul. But how was it possible that this young man, who was a Sunni, understood Persian and was friends with Abd-ur-Rida, who was a Shi'i? In this city Sunnites pretended to be friendly and even brotherly with Shi'ites. Most of the city's inhabitants understood both Arabic and Persian. And most people understood Turkish as well.

Muhammad of Najd was a Sunni outwardly. Although most Sunnites censured Shi'ites, in fact, they say that Shiites are disbelievers this man never would revile Shi'ites. According to Muhammad of Najd, there was no reason for Sunnites to adapt themselves to one of the four Madhhabs; he would say, "Allah's Book does not contain any evidence pertaining to these Madhhabs." He purposefully ignored the ayat al-karimas in this subject and slighted the hadith ash-Sharifs.

Concerning the matter of four Madhhabs: A century after the death of their Prophet Muhammad 'alaihis- salam', four scholars came forward from among Sunnite Muslims: Abu Hanifa, Ahmad bin Hanbal, Malik bin Anas, and Muhammad bin Idris Shafi'i. Some Khalifas forced the Sunnites to imitate one of these four scholars. They said no one except these four scholars could do ijtihad in Qur'an al-karim or in the Sunnat. This movement closed the gates of knowledge and understanding to Muslims. This prohibition of ijtihad is considered to have been the reason for Islam's standstill.

Shi'ites exploited these erroneous statements to promulgate their sect. The number of Shiites was smaller than one-tenth that of Sunnites. But now they have increased and become equal with Sunnites in number. This result is natural. For ijtihad is like a weapon. It will improve Islam's fiqh and renovate the understanding of Qur'an al-karim and Sunnat. Prohibition of ijtihad, on the other hand, is like a rotten weapon. It will confine the Madhhab within a certain framework. And this, in its turn, means to close the gates of inference and to disregard the time's requirements. If your weapon is rotten and your enemy is perfect, you are doomed to be beaten by your enemy sooner or later. I think, the clever ones of the Sunnites will reopen the gate of ijtihad in future. If they do not do this, they will become the minority and the Shi'ites will receive a majority in a few centuries.

[However, the imams (leaders) of the four Madhhabs hold the same creed, the same belief. There is no difference among them. Their difference is only in worships. And this, in turn, is a facility for Muslims. The Shi'ites, on the other hand, parted into twelve sects, thus becoming a rotten weapon. There is detailed information in this respect in the book Milal wa Nihal].

The arrogant youngster, Muhammad of Najd, would follow his nafs (his sensuous desires) in understanding the Qur'an and the Sunnat. He would completely ignore the views of scholars, not only those of the scholars of his time and the leaders of the four Madhhabs, but also those of the notable Sahabis such as Abu Bakr and 'Umar. Whenever he came across a Koranic (Qur'an) verse which he thought was contradictory with the views of those people, he would say, "The Prophet said: I have left the Qur'an and the Sunnat for you.' He did not say, I have left the Qur'an, the Sunnat, the Sahaba, and the imams of Madhhabs for you (5).' Therefore, the thing which is fard is to follow the Qur'an and the Sunnat no matter how contrary they may seem to be to the views of the Madhhabs or to the statements of the Sahaba and scholars (6)."

(Source: Waqf Ikhlas, Istanbul)

The battle to save Pentagon on 9/11

Enver Masud

Firefight is primarily about the heroic efforts of the firefighters at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. What is of interest to us is the authors ' description of the attack on the Pentagon. The authors, Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, write:

The plane crossed Washington Boulevard , . . . traveling more than 500 miles per hour and was less than 30 feet off the ground.

the planes wings knocked over several light poles that line the road.

As the Flight 77 flew nearly to ground level, its right wing sliced into a 750 kilowatt generator . . . The planes right engine ripped a hole in a fence near the generator . . . the left engine grazed the grass . . . Both wings began to break apart, hurling metal fragments into the air.

The nose of the plane hit the facade, . . . about 14 feet above the ground, going 530 miles per hour.

The airplanes tail, 45 feet tall, was still attached to the plane as it plowed into the Pentagon.

Along the outer wall, 21-inch-wide concrete columns, . . . stood every ten feet, . . . The impact of the plane knocked out eight of them completely, and severely damaged two others.

The body of the hijacker who had been flying the plane ended up in the D Ring about 107 feet from the point of impact.

The punch-out hole . . . was created by explosive energy.

In my article What really happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, published by The Wisdom Fund (twf.org), I debunk the theory that Flight 77, a Boeing 757, struck the Pentagon.

At the Dept. of Defense (DoD) News Briefing on September 12, 2001, the words "American Airlines," "Flight 77," "Boeing," "Dulles," and "passengers" were not mentioned.

Standing in front of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Jamie McIntyre, CNN ' s senior Pentagon correspondent since November 1992, reported: From my close up inspection there ' s no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. . . . . The only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage - nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon. . . . It wasn ' t till about 45 minutes later . . . that all of the floors collapsed.

Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher, incident commander at the Pentagon on September 11, corroborates Jamie McIntyre ' s report. At the September 12, 2001, DoD briefing, when asked: "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?" said: "there are some small pieces of aircraft t there ' s no fuselage sections and that sort of thing."

Victoria Clarke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs - "presenter" of the DoD briefing, did not contradict Chief Plaugher.

Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who from her fifth-floor, B-ring office at the Pentagon, witnessed "an unforgettable fireball, 20 to 30 feet in diameter," was called for stretcher duty. She describes a strange absence of airliner debris, there was no sign of the kind of damage to the Pentagon structure one would expect from the impact of a large airliner.

This visible evidence or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the secretary of defense, who in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a ' missile ' .

Barbara Honegger, military affairs journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School , writes that NORAD's: Gen. Larry Arnold, revealed that he ordered one of his jets to fly down low over the Pentagon shortly after the attack that morning, and that his pilot reported back that there was no evidence that a plane had hit the building.

Similar skepticism among the firefighters is noted by Creed and Newman. They write in Firefight, Denis Griffin . . . had been working in the aftermath of the attack all day, and seen wreckage that looked like it could be from an airplane, but there were so many wild stories going around that he wasnt sure what to believe.

Two statements in the book by Creed and Newman are striking:

FBI photographer Jennifer Combs (formerly Jennifer Farmer) went far out of her way to pull hundreds of photographs from archives and narrate all of them.

How did they get access to these photographs, when others have Freedom of Information Act requests pending for these photographs and Pentagon videos?

Plaugher came by . . . We think its al Qaeda, he said, citing a villain many of them had never heard of.

What would cause Plaugher, Fire Chief of Arlington County , to make such a statement so soon after 9/11? Plaugher now serves as "a key member of the IAFC Terrorism Committee."

It should be noted, that to this day, the only passenger lists made public have no Arab names on them, Bin Laden is not wanted for 9/11 at the FBIs Most Wanted, and the only evidence offered by the government to substantiate their claim of a Flight 77 having struck the Pentagon is a fuzzy video that proves nothing indeed the flight recorder data released by the government shows that a plane flew about 400 feet above the Pentagon.

(BOOK REVIEW: Firefight: Inside The Battle To Save The Pentagon On 9/11 by Enver Masud. Enver Masud is an engineer, and founder of The Wisdom Fund. http://911sig. blogspot. com/2008/ 06/firefight- inside-battle- to-save.html)