This from the New York Times regarding Bin Laden's recent message, his second in as many days addressing the people of Pakistan:
While the press is reporting that Osama bin Laden has only recently voiced his opinion of policy in the Muslim world and that he is simply speaking about political issues now in order to garner support for his other, more violent intentions, his call to form a new type of aid agency is one that certainly should be contemplated and headed across the globe, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.“We are in need of a big change in the method of relief work because the number of victims is great due to climate changes in modern times,” Mr. bin Laden said, in the first of the messages posted to jihadist Web sites. He recalled his own experience with farming in Sudan, called for creating a “unique relief agency,” and described watching a father in Pakistan holding his two young children above chest-high flood water, according to a translation by the private SITE Intelligence Group in Washington.In Saturday’s release, Mr. bin Laden, who trained as an engineer, mused about the cost and materials for embankments to control flooding and chastised wealthy Muslim countries for not doing more to help Pakistanis.
Most people are totally ignorant of the way that "humanitarian aid" is used to promote Western hegemony in the post-colonialist world. World Bank loans, for example, during the Cold War were a function of regime support whereby loyal dictators were kept in power with aid as long as they were not siding with the Soviets. Food assistance has long since served U.S. interests as a spot for its subsidized domestic farmer markets and as a public relations campaign. The development of the metropolises in the the third world alongside the prevention of aid for technological advancements for agriculture that could lead to true sovereignty and that have created the type of urban migration that decimates entire nations is another example in a long list of critiques that can be harbored against "aid" today.
The reaction of the Pakistani government to the floods is another example of how skewed and twisted concepts of aid and development are in the contemporary order. Pakistan has been forced to turn towards the IMF for additional assistance as a result of the catastrophe. Global donations were held off long enough to force Pakistan to privitze yet more of its economy and promise to pull back more public spending while implementing VAT's or value added taxes that eventually are passed on to consumers and tend to have ravaging effects on the poor. This reality represents the latest example of the shock doctrine, progressive Naomi Klein's theory that the world of global finance exploits the economies of nations especially in times of great stress caused by natural disasters (i.e. Haiti earlier this year).
The call is timely as well. In recent years, Muslims have become more active socially and in the civil sectors, but this participation has usually addressed the symptoms of a disease while ignoring the root cause of disorder. The activism against the siege on Gaza serves as an international example, addressing the siege in a sense legitimizes the existence of Israel as a state while simultaneously ignoring other atrocities.
For an example more representative for Muslims in the West, many campaigns on behalf of Muslim prisoners have come about in the Western world as Muslims write and advocate on behalf of incarcerated Muslims accused or convicted of crimes. Most of this activism however ignores the policies, both foreign and domestic, that are contributing to the creation of these cases and the law enforcement's tactics and repealing of civil liberties that make it possible for such realities to persist.
The aid organizations of the world share in an inability to address the axioms that create disease and are therefore no exception to this shortcoming. Organizations like the World Food Program may provide food for starving people but never address the macroeconomic irregularities that create the conditions whereby hundreds of millions face hunger each day. Thus, the call from bin Laden is a relevant one all Muslims should actually contemplate in its significance.
The system of Islam is based on charity of self and wealth, of self sacrifice, of simplistic living and lack of extravagant indulgence. These axioms added to the macro-principles of extracting speculation and interest from the economic equation while promoting risk-sharing loans and profit sharing mechanisms as an alternative, promote an economic model where lender and borrower share equally in risk and therefore only reap reward where both are successful. Muslim nations have the ability to set up development banks across the globe that lend on an interest free basis to countries in need. Unfortunately, the corruption and lack of adherence to these principles by the elite of Muslim nations, oftentimes mere puppets to Western dictates, prevent such developments from occurring as so called Islamic organizations oftentimes reproduce the same flawed models of their Western counterparts, albeit with Islamic terms attached.
While, Osama bin Laden's message is treated as mere rhetoric by so-called counter-terrorism "experts", the truth is bin Laden has as long a record of philanthropy as any in the world, having contributed millions of his own money to help Afghans against the Russians, to help the Sudanese regime with infrastructure development, to call for economic boycotts of Israel and advising the politicians of the Saudi state for years.
In reality, his change in conversation is only a marked indicator of his increasing belief that he has achieved his goal of cutting off the ability of the U.S. to interfere in the Middle East. His "rhetoric" marks an increased focus on returning to his actual goal of replacing despotic regimes in Muslim countries. As U.S. influence wanes, it will be interesting to see if the role of Islamic principles continues to seep into institutions in the Muslim world as people of all ideological persuasions refer to Islam in their public and private lives; from Turkey to the Persian Gulf there is an increasing voice for Islamists in governance. Creating a transnational Islamic aid bank would be a step toward increasing that influence region wide and is a serious possibility in years ahead. Hugo Chavez's Banco de Sur has posed the possibility that South American nations may wrest themselves form IMF dictate permanently.
While the reality is that the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East are little interested in such populist solutions, the fact that Osama bin Laden is referencing them is a certain indicator that he believes a form of victory is near, but only in the event the Islamic system can come to drive the political and economic realities of the Muslim world. Certainly an Islamic revolution in Pakistan would contribute to that cause, but one thing is for certain: prior to 9-11 no such call would have been fathomable. That is not so much the case ten years into the War on Terror, another indicator of how much has actually changed.
As U.S. policy makers and their media approach the bin Laden phenomena deliberately downplaying his significance as a carefully plotted tactic, they continue to ignore reality. The one effect they get from this is that nobody ever listens to what he actually says. We will see if that continues to be the case in the near future. It is looking as if he may get his way in Pakistan increasingly each day. Were that to happen and stability of any form to arrive, the world may hear much more from its Most Wanted Man, and that has regimes from Riyadh to Kabul in definite fear for sure. Expect an international Islamic aid agency to be proposed soon, of course with Barack Obama and the Arab Dictators' full fledged support...
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