Once more Pakistan’s capital Islamabad was the scene of an awful and despicable terrorist attack - this time against The Marriott Hotel. And once again the large majority of casualties were local, hard working most probably Muslim Pakistanis. We at the Embassy mourn their loss. But also a number of foreigners were hit by the terrible blast and subsequent fire. A fellow colleague the Czech ambassador to Pakistan lost his life together with a Vietnamese and two Americans according to media reports.
Three Danish diplomats were living at the hotel. One was unhurt, one suffered injuries that were treated at the hospital and one diplomat is missing. We hope for the best and fear the worst for him.
The new Pakistani president Zardari has declared that he will liberate Pakistan for the cancer that terrorism constitutes in his country.
Somehow terrorism must lose whatever little popular support it have in order to remove that cancer. As seen by the attack on The Marriott Hotel the victims are mostly local civilians and hardly the main target for the terrorists. In this respect a recent survey - published yesterday in Jordan Times - is promising but also shows that there is still a long road to travel.
As stated in JT:
“Jordanian Muslims’ support for Osama Ben Laden has dropped dramatically this year, with only 19 per cent expressing confidence in Al Qaeda leader, compared to 61 per cent three years ago…”.
Also according to the survey around 25% of Jordanians (this is not the good news) supports suicide attacks – the positive side to it is that it is 18 %-points less than five years ago.
As political analyst Mohammad Abu Rumman states, there are many reasons behind the decline in Al Qaeda’s popularity.
“The movement’s standing greatly decreased after the Amman bombings. There is more awareness as well in the Arab world of Al Qaeda’s actions and many reject its operations that target civilians. Other Sunni resistance factions have initiated media and political campaigns against Al Qaeda, and that affects them”.
The last sentence about active campaigns is very important.
So in the middle of our grief there is hope that support to terrorists and of terrorism is on the decline – albeit not nearly fast enough.
September 22, 2008 at 14:57
The so called support for terror is more of a rejection to US, some western nations, and authoritarian regimes ploicies’, especially if we know that most- if not all- these regimes are supported by the west(or at least the west turn their eye away as if they don’t see). In science there is a rule that says: The less we understand a phenomenon, the more variables we need to explain and predict it.
September 22, 2008 at 23:18
Mohanned – thank you for your comment. I am not so sure. I think people generally are intelligent enough to draw a distinction between their favourable / not so favourable opinion of a country or a system and a possible support of terrorism. You mentioned science, so I will mention Abu Aardvark and a particular statement he made in this respect “Support for and opposition to al-Qaeda has very little to do with America’s favourability ratings” on his blog. Lynch’s entry is by the way very interesting in a Public Diplomacy perspective.
September 23, 2008 at 00:09
Ok, I didn’t want to be blunt about the issue, but the support has something to do with the ideology. Based on the held ideology events will be interpreted, a biased policy will be interpreted as an attack on the ideology, a recent example is the responce to the book@cafe, freedom of drinking was interpreted by many as an insult to the masses and their relegion.
I read the piece-thanks for the link- but the writer doesn’t provide any support to his argument. The issue didn’t reach the causation stage, it is still hovering around the correlations.
September 23, 2008 at 02:17
Thomas, sorry to hear about your colleuges and fellow countrymen, as well as all innocent lives lost in that attack.
As for the stats, I tend to agree with Rintwai in that article, who claims support for suicide attacks are context-specific. This didn’t use to be the case but I think after 9/11 and al-queda’s movements in the region, Muslims and Arabs began to differentiate between the various movements and their targets. They will tend to agree with a Palestinian group targeting an Israel military checkpoint, as opposed to Al-Queda targeting hotels in Amman. Two groups, with differing ideologies, goals and target, representing two different people.
This differentiation is an interesting development in my opinion
September 23, 2008 at 07:40
I beg to differ with you naseem. The context you described is more like: not in my own back yard. For examle, alqaeda ideology exists in jordan and is tolerated by some in the society, and sometimes even tolerated by the system.
September 23, 2008 at 12:09
Mohannad, you are right, there are some people that still tolerate suicidal attacks. You can read it from the statistics. The good news is as the Ambassador puts it, also in statistics, that things have changed. Naseem is correct as well, people started to differentiate after 9/11, and even more after the Amman attacks.
It is an astonishing achievment for the people of Jordan where they drop support for Osama bin laden from 61% three years ago to only 19% now. Hope it moves further down in the future.
September 23, 2008 at 13:56
I am sorry for Pakistan and Denmark’s tragic losses.
September 23, 2008 at 20:26
That is what I am saying, the stats didn’t go down because of a change in the heart but because people were threatened to be victims in their own country, which brings us back to the human nature of self interest. At one time this ideology was state sponcered-the afghan soviet conflict. But the chickens eventually came home to roost. Also if you recall some in the IAF and the MB actually went as far as saying: Those people deserved it because they were at an immoral and unislamic establishments. Some of them even paid tribute to zarqawi, and don’t forget that zarqawi threatened the king personally and kept insulting him, so I wouldn’t be surprised that those stats are highly distorted and skewed.
And also let me throw in some academic mumbo jumbo, the attitude toward persons or organizations is completly different from the attitudes toward their actions, that is for an attitude to truely reflect and affect behavior(in this case the support of such actions) it should be compatible in time, context, target, and action. So the survey to be accurate should ask for example: Do you support suicide bombings in amman? Then, Do you suppport suicide bombings in Denemark? The USA,etc… I hope you get what I am saying..
February 16, 2009 at 16:34
agencies were involved in all this
March 2, 2009 at 12:39
[...] continues to strike me as odd is the relative support of OBL in Jordan knowing that Jordan have been a very [...]