Opinion
Analysis
September has changed forever
The days in early September are not like any other days of the year anymore. We
can now speak of time before and after 9/11. Whether we think this event
compared to other disasters in the world has taken on enormous proportion or
not, one cannot deny that what followed after the attacks in New York and
Washington has severely changed international politics.
At first it seemed as if the US would gain the support from the rest of the
world, many countries joined the war in Afghanistan. But soon the US continued
with its unilateral politics, perhaps even more determined than before. The
conflicts during the diplomatic events prior to the attack on Iraq symbolised a
downturn in American relations to the rest of the world. UN’s Security Council
was divided in two.
Americans are more afraid then before. They feel that their country is under
threat, that there are people who want to harm them. That is one reason why the
war in Iraq has gained support, and it is also the reason why foreign policy is
a running theme in the presidential election campaign.
Unfortunately it is not only 9/11 that has given September a feeling of
remembrance and sadness. On the 10 of September last year, Sweden’s Foreign
Minister Anna Lindh was murdered. A country proud of its openness suddenly found
itself in deep shock when one of its most popular and loved politicians was
stabbed to death when shopping without bodyguards in a department store.
Anna Lindh was a European politician who occasionally was tough in her critique
of the Bush administration. She did not shy away from declaring in Parliament
the importance of telling the US to withdraw any plans of creating a national
missile defence.
This year has given us another tragic event: the Beslan school siege in Russia.
At time of writing, there are over 100 victims of the siege remaining in
Moscow’s hospitals, 70 of them are children, whose condition is serious.
No official death toll has been announced. Last week, some sources mentioned 335
dead. But according to Vladimir Ustinow (Prosecutor General) the number was 326.
Journalists on the scene have questioned the number of deaths.
Ten victims of the terror in Beslan arrived in Moscow late last week and were
sent to a psychiatric clinic. According to the doctor, all of them were
suicidal. Another 132 people need psychiatric care. One person taken hostage has
already committed suicide.
The events mentioned are no longer a concern solely for the countries in
question. What happens in one part of the world has its consequences felt
elsewhere. The world’s television networks broadcasted pictures filmed inside
the school’s gymnasium where over 1,000 people were held hostages by Chechen
separatists.
Fear and panic, grief, anger and hopelessness once again found their way into
our living rooms and gave us another reason to think of September as a month of
misery.
What happened to hockey
revival promises?
Peaked by the marvels of Phoenix Assurance tournament and Mapinduzi Cup, there
are now signs that the campaign to revive hockey has lost its momentum.
The Chairman of Tanzania Hockey Union (THU), Rizwan Fazal, and his committee
told The Express in 2002 that they had discovered the reasons that hindered the
development of hockey, which in the past three decades, was one of the four most
popular sports in Tanzania.
To every one’s delight, most of the teams that starred in the past era, still
existed and had maintained their past record in both skills and determination.
Twiga of Arusha, El Hillal of Tanga, Dar es Salaam Institute A and B sides, TPDF
and Navy Zanzibar, all proved their might in the sport in just-ended two
tournaments, Mapinduzi Cup and Phoenix Assurance tournament, which took place in
Tanga.
The Tanga event also attracted teams from Kenya, which capitalised on the long
absence of Tanzanian teams in the field to clinch the trophy.
After Mapinduzi Cup, however, all was quiet again; no hockey news came after
that and things seemed to be dormant.
Does the long silence mean Rizwan and his committee are planning for something
big in the near future? It is hard to say what is going on at THU.
The life and existence of any sport is the presence of tournaments. THU must
realise this and take immediate steps to bring hockey back to limelight.
At a time when sports investments have shown remarkable improvement, THU must
know that the opportunity to win a sponsorship is well at their disposal. It’s
just a matter of planning and things will come its way.
While we hail Rizwan and his committee for a good start, we still insist they
ought to press for more tournaments - at least 12 events a year, as is common in
other sports.
We would also like to remind the solely governing body, National Sports Council,
to turn its attention to other sports such as hockey, which at present do not
enjoy huge popularity. Hockey once provided Olympic teams for Tanzania and we
want that honour back.
Re-elected Bush obstruction to peace in the
Middle East
By Evarist Kagaruki
When, in October 2000, terrorists launched a suicide attack on the USS Cole in
Yemen, killing 17 American marines, it was only three weeks before Americans
went to the polls to elect a new president, as President Bill Clinton was
exiting. It was also about a month after the eruption of the second intifada
(Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation). The uprising was a
consequence of two things: one, the breakdown of the Israeli-Palestinian peace
talks at Camp David in July 2000; and two, the controversial visit by Ariel
Sharon (then not yet Israeli Prime Ministry) to a Jerusalem shrine holy to both
Muslims and Jews, two months later.
The resultant effects of the two dramatic events (the eruption of a new wave of
violence and the assault on the USS Cole) were not hard to fathom: the total
collapse of the Middle East peace process, escalation of the cycle of bloody
violence in the region, and increase in the acts of international terrorism.
In the face of such a scenario, it was deemed important in some quarters, that
Clinton’s successor should be one who understood and appreciated the anger,
frustration and anguish of the Palestinians (and all those who sympathise with
their cause) over the failure of Camp David and Sharon’s provocative visit to
the holy shrine, and was ready to revive the peace process. The choice was
between Al Gore (Vice President in the Clinton administration) and then Texas
Governor George W. Bush who emerged winner, albeit by stealth.
From the perspective of the Middle East crisis, Bush was a wrong choice. This
man had shown little knowledge of foreign affairs, let alone the Middle East
problems, and lacked clarity on foreign policy during his campaign and in the
pre-election debates with Gore. His emphasis on developing an anti-ballistic
missile-system, and the militant language of “retaliation” and “confrontation”
(rather than tolerance, negotiation and compromise) when he spoke of “solutions”
to the world’s political turbulence, shed light on the larger part of his psyche
with regard to foreign policy.
On the Middle East, he formed a mental picture of an escalation of the crisis
where Iraq threatened Israel with nuclear or chemical missiles. The Palestinian
was viewed in the context of that mental pictorial scenario, because to him and
his men (and women) in the State Department and the Pentagon, Palestinian
militants of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Brigade were “terrorists”
supported by nemesis Saddam Hussein. The intifada was an “Islamic revolution
exported by the Ayatollahs in Tehran”, so the reasoning went.
That is the premise on which Bush perceived and judged the conflict between the
Palestinians and Israel, before and after he assumed the presidency, which
explains why this issue was ignored by his administration until the plan to
attack Iraq, hatched in Washington in collaboration with 10 Downing Street, was
made public.
It was at this point in time that we started hearing the US President talk,
tongue in cheek, about Palestinian statehood. It was empty talk just alluding to
the widely publicised bogus initiative for the Middle East peace known as “road
map”. This is a make-believe plan co-sponsored by the US (the chief architect),
UN, EU and Russia to “resolve” Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The catch in it was
that it envisioned a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel by 2005.
The plan now lies in tatters because it was a non-starter, for its main - and
perhaps the sole – objective was to placate the Arab states, and other
sympathetic people with the plight of the Palestinian people, whose cooperation
in the war against Saddam was of critical importance. Having overthrown the
Baghdad regime and occupied Iraq, no one is interested in the road map or
talking about the Palestinian question anymore! The whole international
community, stooped, as it were, in hypocrisy, is silent – letting Sharon’s
military machine terrorise and kill Palestinians with impunity under the guise
of fighting terror.
President Bush is now seeking re-election in the November poll. Should the
American voters bestow to him the honour of commander-in-chief for another four
years, we should expect to see continued bloodshed in the occupied territories
and in Israel (since the intifada and suicide bombings can cease only with the
end of occupation), more acts of terrorism and heightened tensions, instability
and insecurity around the world.