Since the US regards President General Pervez Musharraf as an important partner in its war against so-called 'Islamic terrorism', he has been receiving a lot of attention in the US media during his visit to address the UN General Assembly's annual session.
He has been making good use of that opportunity to advocate the case of the Muslim peoples, telling, among others, the ABC news network's disconcerted interviewer, that 'we' may win battles but lose the war against terrorism if the root cause of the Muslim anger is not duly addressed. At General Assembly too, he forcefully voiced the Muslim peoples' chief grievance against the West. "The tragedy of Palestine is an open wound inflicted on the psyche of every Muslim," he averred.
"It generates anger and resentment across the Islamic world." Of course, the President also touched upon his own country's long-standing dispute with India over Kashmir, expressing the hope that in the ongoing Pakistan-India negotiations over "previously irreconcilable disputes" India will show "the same sincerity, flexibility and boldness that Pakistan demonstrates."
While India seems to have realised the worth of peaceful settlement of disputes with Pakistan, including the core issue of Kashmir, the latest formula for the resolution of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, known as the Middle East peace roadmap, lies in tatters due to the US encouraged Israeli intransigence.
Even in his General Assembly speech, a day before General Musharraf's address, US President George W. Bush in a clear reference to the popularly elected Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, urged the world leaders to "withdraw all favour and support from any Palestinian ruler who fails his people and betrays their cause."
He did not explain though what gives him the right to decide for the Palestinian people that their leader has failed them and betrayed their cause. Had that been the case, Arafat would no longer be as popular a leader among his people as he remains despite Bush's best efforts to sideline him. It is not for nothing that Bush has earned the distinction of being the most pro-Israeli president the US has ever had.
The former US President, Bill Clinton, went out of his way to help East Timor get independence from Indonesia while the territory's two independence movement leaders were jointly bestowed with a Nobel Peace Prize.
A few days ago, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, accused the Sudan of committing genocide in Darfur threatening it with economic sanctions for having killed 50,000 Muslims of African origin and displacing another one million. What has been going on in Darfur is utterly condemnable; however, Khartoum is co-operating with the international community for a peaceful settlement of the political dispute in the region.
Notably, the US and other western countries that are expressing their sense of horror over the killings in Darfur, have yet to utter any denunciation of the killings in Kashmir, where more people, about 80,000, have been killed and many others have simply 'disappeared'.
The tragic story of Russia's suppression of the Chechen people has also failed to elicit an appropriate international response. It had initially drawn some criticism from the US and the European Union, but now that the US, helped by several European nations, is in occupation of two Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, there is little expression of sympathy for the hapless Chechen people. The situation being what it is, Muslims pose the pertinent question: why is it that the international community confines its interest to resolving only disputes like the one between East Timor and Indonesia and now the Darfur region and the Sudanese government?
The present confrontation between the US-led western nations and the Muslim peoples, rooted as it is in the unresolved disputes of Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya can be brought to an end if, as President Musharraf observed, the major western powers try to settle the internationally recognised disputes affecting the Muslims.
He was also right on the mark when he warned, "action has to be taken before an iron curtain finally descends between the West and the Islamic world." Such an action, it hardly needs saying, must comprise just solutions of all these conflicts.