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A decade ago the US, under President
George W. Bush, invaded Iraq. The war came just six months after the US
government invited a number of pesantren (Islamic boarding school)
leaders and teachers, including me, to make a comparative study of
education systems by visiting the nation.
Before the study,
we were invited to the US State Department in Washington DC to discuss
the planned war in Iraq with then assistant secretary of state for
democracy, human rights and labor Lorne W. Craner. At that time, Colin
Powell was the secretary of state.
In our
discussion, I raised a question about the US government’s definition of
terrorism.
I thought the
question was important and relevant, because pesantren have been
stigmatized as a breeding ground for terrorists that the US had been
fighting. Indeed, one of the reasons why the US invaded Iraq was to end
Saddam Hussein’s support of al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden, the man held
responsible for the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 that killed almost 3,000
people.
Because of
9/11, the US attacked Afghanistan in October 2001 and toppled the Taliban
government that was protecting al-Qaeda. However, this invasion also
killed many innocent civilians such as children and women.
During our
discussion, Craner spoke of the US plan to attack Iraq and overthrow
Saddam. The reason, as described by Craner, was because Saddam Hussein
stored weapons of mass destruction and was protecting al-Qaeda
terrorists.
The
discussion took place in an atmosphere of high tension because none of us
supported the plan. We were angry, believing there was no strong evidence
that Saddam had such weapons or that he had been protecting al-Qaeda
terrorists.
We insisted
that it was impossible for Saddam and bin Laden to join forces, because
they were ideologically opposed to each other. Saddam embraced a secular
ideology, while bin Laden was a fundamentalist.
We clerics,
who previously spent our daily lives reading classical books written in
Arabic with no vowels, were suddenly at the US State Deparment on a
diplomatic mission. We tried to defend the rights of the Iraqi people
from the threat of US invasion.
I challenged
the US labelling as terrorists those who resisted the US government’s
foreign policy, which I considered unfair to Muslim countries at that
time, especially Palestine. In response to my statement, Craner said that
any attempt to reach a goal by sacrificing innocent civilians was
terrorism.
I then asked
him: “What did you think when you
attacked Afghanistan in October 2001 after the event of 9/11 that
devastated the WTC in New York? Didn’t you know that many Afghan innocent
civilians, mainly children and women, died because of the attack? Didn’t
you think that it was also an act of terrorism?”
Craner
replied that it was a risk of military action that we could not be
avoided. The pesantren leaders booed the US official, one of them
shouting: “This is terrorism by the
state!”
The
discussion ended in our disappointment. The strikes took place on March
19, 2003, and in 2006 Iraq’s new government executed Saddam.
The day after
the invasion started, some of my fellow pesantren leaders gathered in
Yogyakarta for a rally to condemn the military action, which we believed
constituted a gross violation of human rights.
We also urged
the US to stop the attack because we believed many innocent civilians
would fall victims. However, the US would not change its policy. The US
invasion ran counter the definition of terrorism as explained by Craner.
The US
invasion of Iraq in 2003 remains a war of terror rather than a war on
terror, unless the US government suddenly revised its definition of
terrorism. ●
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