Losing war against terrorism: U.N. Debate
Letter to Editor, Toronto Star, Sunday 26 September 2004
During debate last week about the future of the United Nations, South African President Thabo Mbeki said a major problem is that world priorities - most notably terrorism - are being determined by the strongest countries. Meanwhile, the "poor and powerless feel threatened by a permanent hurricane of poverty."
Leaders from mostly developing nations expressed fears that U.N. policies dictated by wealthy nations are obstructing efforts to fight poverty and warned that failure to improve life for the world's poor will only perpetuate terrorism. Terrorism's roots, many said, lie in anger driven by widespread hunger and poverty.
The ever-widening income gap between the rich and the poor, between the industrialized north and the developing south, was noted by Namibian President Sam Nujoma, who stressed "this situation represents a dangerous time bomb, which the world can ill-afford to let take its own course."
The international community is "winning the battle against terrorists," added President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. "However, what we are doing is insufficient to win the ultimate war against them." Anti-terror responses, he insisted, must be "accompanied by a clear, long-term strategy, striking at the root of the problem if we are to ensure final success against this scourge."
Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh agreed that "for the majority of the world's people ... the most immediate threats are those of poverty, hunger, unsafe drinking water, environmental degradation and endemic or infectious diseases, such as AIDS and malaria."
He added that the "knee-jerk reaction of crushing (terrorism) militarily fails to address its many manifestations, or get at its roots and causes."
Musharraf and other leaders also said resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was vital to reducing tensions that lead to terror. Musharraf described it as "an open wound on the psyche of every Muslim," a conflict that "generates anger and resentment across the Islamic world."
A related major world problem is that Canadians and our government let noise from the U.S. drown out these important insights from the leaders of smaller, poorer nations. -- Bernard Daly, Toronto