17 October 2001

African Ambassadors Share Perceptions of Terrorist Attacks on U.S.

Washington - Nigerian Ambassador Jibril Aminu summed up the feelings of close to a dozen of his colleagues discussing the recent terrorist attacks in New York City and on the Pentagon when he said, "whatever affects America, affects the rest of the world."

Aminu spoke at an October 17 symposium entitled: "Africans Speak Out on the War Against Terrorism," sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the National Summit on Africa. He was joined by fellow envoys from: Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Tunisia, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Referring to the two hijacked aircraft that slammed into the twin World Trade Center Towers, collapsing them and killing close to 5,000 people on September 11, Aminu said, "seeing someone fly a plane into a building is one of the worst things we will see in our lifetimes." He added, "Terrorism may have a reason but could never have a justification and it's wrong to confuse the two."

America, the Nigerian said, "is a great nation" and any attack on it is an attack on democratic values shared by people worldwide.

Ambassador Edith Ssempala of Uganda called the attacks "an unspeakable crime" that was "not only an attack on America but on our common humanity. Terror is evil. It has no religion or ideology. True believers in Allah do not kill innocent people or themselves" in indiscriminant suicide attacks.

As for the Muslim extremist who has been identified as the chief suspect and mastermind behind the attacks, Ssempala said, "by attacking the United States at home [Usama] Bin Laden had hoped to ferment hatred between Muslims and Christians - but he has failed.

"Instead, the attacks have united people of all faiths," the Ugandan diplomat said. "Incidents of victimization of American Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent have been few and isolated and condemned roundly by the leadership of the United States."

Ssempala said, "The leadership of President Bush and the members of the U.S. Congress has been most admirable" in their response to the attacks. "Their efforts to mobilize people all over the world in a global war against terrorism has earned the United States many friends."

Ambassador Yusuf Nzibo of Kenya said terrorism came home to him when his daughter, who worked near the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, was injured when al Qaeda terrorists exploded a bomb that destroyed the building, killing more than 200 Kenyans in August 1998. This terrorism "is a world menace," Nzibo said, and "the United States should not stand alone" in combating it.

Touching on the issue of Muslim dissatisfaction with the United States overseas, Nzibo said "I am a Muslim and I know that many of the young Muslims you see demonstrating against the U.S.... have a love/hate relationship with the U.S. because they are economically marginalized. If you gave them a green card [residence permit] they would be here tomorrow."

Ambassador Cheick Diarrah of Mali told the symposium that when he and other African ambassadors recently met with Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner, "I told him Islam means peace and that we think no one should hijack this religion" to fit their own purposes.

Organized terror is no stranger to Tunisia, said Ambassador Hatem Atallah as he described how his country fought a long struggle against a "fundamentalist Islamic Movement" that specialized in throwing acid in women's faces and on their legs to show their disapproval of the freedom women enjoyed in secular society. "It took us eight years to clear our country of this scourge," he declared.

Atallah said success only came about after the Tunisian government attacked the terrorists in a multi-facet approach that addressed cultural, social and religious aspects of the problem as well as politics. One lesson the diplomat said he had to offer the United States was that the rule of law was an important part of the victory against terrorism. "We did it by the force of law, not by the law of force."

In that regard, Malian Ambassador added, "My advice to the U.S. would be to be the leading force for justice in the world."

Ambassador Richard Sezibera of Rwanda had a unique perspective on terrorism to share coming from a country that had between 500,000 to 800,000 of its citizens murdered in a genocidal campaign mounted by its own government in 1994.

According to Sezibera, "Extremists do not want accommodation or negotiation. Part of their agenda is to portray the world as black and white. It is basically a world view that wants to exclude" people and sometimes destroy them. "In my own country [Hutu] extremists [and their allies] divided the world between Hutus and Tutsis" and Tutsis were killed simply because of their ethnicity.

Two lessons, the diplomat said he learned from his country's tragedy were: "Terror is acquired - people are taught to hate at a young age. So, education dealing with cultural issues in an honest way is very important. And, terrorists must be shown they cannot use terror as an instrument of [political] policy."