Arab opinion mourns 'less safe' world

Victims of the September 11 terror attacks were mourned worldwide today, but in the Middle East, Arabs said Washington’s support for Israel and the war on terror that began in the aftermath of the World Trade Center’s collapse only fuelled anger and violence.

From Egypt to Yemen, Arabs said the world had become less safe during the three years since 19 militants from the Middle East hijacked four passenger planes in the United States and used them to kill more than 3,000 people.

“September 11 was a tragic day in our history because so many innocent people were killed at the hands of militants, who find a fertile ground in our region in view of the biased US policies toward Israel and against Arab causes,” said 34-year-old banker Mahmoud Obeid in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

But the Archbishop of Canterbury, in Egypt to help mend religious rifts, urged Muslims, Christians

and Jews to move beyond “the way the faithless world thinks” and reject violent revenge, terror and the killing of innocents.

“If we do act in the same way as our enemies, we imprison ourselves in their anger, their evil,” Rowan Williams said during a speech to religious leaders at a top Sunni Muslim centre in Cairo.

“We are not forced to act in revengeful ways,” added Williams, who was in New York when al-Qaida militants slammed hijacked planes into the twin towers.

Arabs have long blamed US policies in the Middle East, including Washington’s support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, for fomenting the kind of anti-American hatred that could drive people to launch an attack of the magnitude of September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington DC.

Egyptian columnist Fahmy Howeidy called for critical self analysis from people in the Middle East and Islamic worlds ”because those people who committed the September 11 attacks … were (also) Muslims and Arabs.”

“But … the problem is the Americans don’t want to criticise themselves,” he said. ”They don’t look at their policies and mistakes, like the US position toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“By defending the terrorism committed by Israel against the Palestinians, they are filling people with anger.”

US Army soldiers in Iraq held small ceremonies to coincide with the moment the first jetliner hit the World Trade Center.

Sgt. Dionna Eves, 23, a medic from Clearwater, Florida, said the anniversary “reminds you of why you’re here” because “we lost a lot of people in that one incident.”

But Captain Rick Hewitt, 31, of La Crosse, Wisconsin, said the attacks don’t “really change our mission here one iota. We’re trying to rebuild this country.”

The third anniversary of the attacks was welcomed by some, particularly contributors to militant Islamic Web sites.

“I thank God that He made us see such a day,” said one online contributor who identified herself only as Umm Rafida. “Whenever I look to the picture of the tower while its collapsing, tears well in my eyes and I thank God.”

Lebanon’s leading newspaper, An-Nahar, published a caricature depicting the numbers “11” in the form of two tower buildings with black smoke rising from the top. ”Since September 11, 2001, the world has been killed by terrorism,” the caricature’s caption says.

An editorial in the Saudi English-language Arab News daily called for an end to the “blame game” perpetuating “our own poisoned sense of victimhood, while alienating and confirming others in their own negative views.”

Describing the Sept. 11 plane hijackers, including 15 Saudis, as “twisted fanatics,” the paper said world has not become safer since then.

In Pakistan, the anniversary raised security fears and authorities deployed hundreds of extra security forces to embassies, government buildings and other potential targets.

Spain’s press linked the anniversary with the six month commemoration of the Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people. Leading daily El Pais said the world has not become safer since September 11, with Casablanca, Istanbul and Jakarta being added to the list of cities affected by Islamic terrorism.

Amman supermarket owner Hamzeh Ghazawi, 26, said: “On this day every year, I remember the beginning of the chaos, the fear and the insecurity which the United States has brought upon the whole world.”