Suspicious minds

Many Arab rulers would like to support the Western war on Osama bin Laden. But their subjects disagree, and have a laundry list of reasons why.

By Eric Boehlert

Oct. 9, 2001 | In December 1998, after Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had once again refused to allow United Nations weapons inspectors to do their job, the United States and Britain responded with a four-day bombing campaign over Baghdad.

The timing was tricky -- just before the commencement of the Muslim holy month, Ramadan. Sensitive to the implications, the allied forces were careful to end their bombing raid before Ramadan, hoping to avoid provoking unnecessary anger from Muslims around the world.

But that didn't stop two smiling U.S. servicemen from posing for a photographer as they scribbled "Happy Ramadan" on a missile bound for Baghdad. The photograph, capturing America's worst kind of stereotypical disrespect toward Islam, was printed in Arabic newspapers throughout the region and broadcast over and over on Middle Eastern television.

"That image was shown nonstop," recalls Chris Toensing, editor of the Middle East Report, who was living in Egypt at the time. "The damage was done as far as public opinion."

The image has been quickly forgotten by the West, but lingers on with many Muslims and Arabs. Is it any wonder then that so much distrust has built up over the last decade between the two cultures? The photograph of the sacrilegious bomb offers a shorthand explanation of why the American-led war on terrorism is being viewed so skeptically by many Arabs -- and why Arab rulers, even if they despise Osama bin Laden, cannot embrace the cause too openly.

American allies such as Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Russia have all rushed forward to support the military strikes taking place in Afghanistan, but crucial leaders from the Arab world have remained conspicuously quiet. Regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, among others, are all anxious for their own political reasons to snuff out bin Laden's terrorist network, as well as to cozy up to Washington. But they must first test the waters of public opinion. And the gap between the politics of the streets and the politics of government in the Middle East is often vast.

"We don't think much about Arab public opinion," notes Ali Abunimah, vice president of the Arab-American Action Network. That's because, he says, the region is dominated by authoritarian and totalitarian rulers who have no interest in allowing polls to take public snapshots of the populous.

With no true democracies among the Arab nations, public opinion cannot directly change state policy. Governments, however, ignore the will of the people at their own risk. "The regimes are autocratic, but that doesn't mean they're stable," notes Abunimah. "They need to pay very close attention to public opinion."

Next page: "The level of trust towards the United States is virtually nil"