Five years after 9/11, Arab resentment grows

Jim Maceda Correspondent

BEIRUT, Lebanon — September 11th is a date that resonates in several ways for the Arab world.

It is marked with pride and celebration by al-Qaida leaders and operatives; it is mourned by the families of hundreds of Muslim victims who died in the terrorist attacks five years ago. And, for many ordinary Arabs, from Cairo, to Riyadh, to Beirut, it evokes fear — and the prospect of further pain.

“9/11 was a turning point,” explained Makram Rabah, a law major and one of several graduate students I spoke to at the American University of Beirut campus this week. ''This is a new world war, basically, that will change everything. It has changed our lives from bad to worse,” he said.

Five years after that fateful day and the subsequent launching of the Bush administration's “War on Terror,” Arab-affairs analysts and media professionals say that Arab public opinion — the so-called “Arab street” — is even angrier against America and U.S. policies today than it was then.

Indeed, most of these experts agree that the positive, sympathetic feelings that emerged, across the Arab world immediately following the 9/11 attacks were quickly squandered. ''People perceive it as a kind of victimization of the Arab world,'' said Dr. Gamal Abdul Gawad, professor of international relations at the University of Cairo. ''The American invasion of Iraq had a huge negative effect, so did America's perceived disregard for Palestine and, recently, the war in Lebanon.”

Insults continue to mount
At the American University of Beirut campus, the students ticked off the same litany of grievances. ''The way America always supports Israel is fueling the anger,'' said Ali Kamakhi, a Saudi geology major. “So even if many Arabs don't believe in what Osama bin Laden believes, they just want to hurt the Americans in some way or another.''

Many students pointed to tens of thousands of Muslim civilians have been killed or wounded in various U.S. or Israeli offensives, from Baghdad to Gaza.

''The harm that was done to America happened in one day, 9/11,'' said political science grad Basma Nabulsi, a Jordanian, ''but the harm that has happened in this region is continuous.''

Similar views are also held by Arabs who have studied or trained in the U.S. and who appreciate American freedoms. ''We love your institutions, '' said Rabah. ''We just hate your policies.'' 

Even mainstream Arab professionals, like Jamil M'roue, who publishes and edits Beirut's English-language newspaper, the Daily Star, finds himself caught up in the contradiction of both being appalled by the terror of 9/11 and of applauding al-Qaida when, as he puts it, it gets to the “rabid tiger” that America has become.

M'roue, a former Neiman Fellow who says he is keeping a copy of the September 11, 2001, edition of the Daily Star by his desk until the day bin Laden is killed or captured, does not mince his criticism of U.S. strategy in the Middle East. ''America is not winning at all, America is not even in the game,'' he said. ''America has forfeited the race… . We've got a real problem — it's the world versus the Beltway.''

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