How The Middle East Changed the World In 2001.

** Why Has Iran Become The Most Stable Power Between Central Asia And East Africa?

** Powell Was Impressed By The Unanimity Of OSCE's Dec. 4 Decision At Bucharest To Enhance Police Co-operation In Choking off Int'l Funding Of Terrorists, Which Involved FMs From 55 European And Central Asian Countries 

** How Will The US Rid The World Of Saddam Hussein?

** A Post-Saddam Democracy In One Iraq, Or A Partition, Will Affect The Neighbours

NICOSIA - The most significant world event in 2001 was the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on New York and Washington. The attacks, planned in the Middle East with 15 of the 19 hijackers from Saudi Arabia, changed the whole world. The most significant world event in 2002 will be an indication, clear or not yet so clear, as to whether or not the US-led war on global terrorism will end it once and for all.

The most challenging question, moving from 2001 to 2002, will be whether or not Arab freedom fighters and states that harbour them will be able to free themselves from the box of global terrorism. Before asking this question - If they will, where will they go? - one should understand that the US has changed a lot since Sept. 11. The biggest challenge in 2002 for the Arabs - people and rulers - is to see clearly how the US has changed.

It is no longer necessary for the Arabs to expect the US to understand the justice of their cause - be it Palestine or the Golan Heights. It is more important for the Arabs to understand why the US is more interested in its new sense of justice than their own - why and how Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon, a war criminal to the Arabs but "Mr. Security" to the Israelis, has won the power game with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. It was thanks to the Arabs' failure to perceive the angle from which Sharon launched himself against Arafat and what turn President Bush now wanted to have for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The extent of the change in the US after Sept. 11 was such that we can only describe it in this simplistic way: It was a seismic shift from the intellect to the instinct, from the dynamism of security to the dynamism of insecurity. To this one should add that the huge gap between the military capabilities of the US and the rest of the world is growing.

In the Middle East it was the instinct which created Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Ladin, Hamas or Hizbullah. To expect understanding from the US intellect is to wait until the US has done the seismic shift back from the instinct; that will take time - beyond 2002 for sure. What it means is that the US instinct, which is different from its Arab or Islamic counterpart, is far more determined and powerful than the Bin Ladins or Hizbullahs and the states that harbour them put together. Just watch the Fox News Channel of Rupert Murdoch to see how the instinct has taken hold in the US. This is what Sharon saw and what the Arabs failed to see after Sept. 11.

See the dynamism of insecurity at work in Art Buchwald's column of Dec. 5: "In Washington, people now first look at (the ID card on) your chest, and then your face, to see if they match up". Then he quotes Nick Glover, a Federal Marshall, as saying this: "I hope the whole country is forced to wear the identification. It will not only make it easier to find terrorists, but also make it much easier to know who the person in line in front of you in the cafeteria is.

People have worked with each other in offices for years and never knew who the person in the next cubicle was". Back in Afghanistan, US and allied Afghan forces in early December were holding three former Taliban or Al Qaida fighters who claim to be American citizens. One of them, a wounded young man, was identified as John Walker, who had studied Arabic and Islam in Yemen and Pakistan.

In the new war atmosphere, Americans are losing freedom of speech, with the military spoonfeeding them with what they ought to get from the war on terrorism. Military tribunals will try the terrorism suspects. The sense of patriotism is pitched to the highest. President Bush has got extra powers and his popularity rating gets higher.

The Defence Department is spoonfeeding information on a daily basis to the Western media, which in turn lets the world know what the US thinks. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has become a TV star, and his press conferences now have higher rating than some popular programmes. There are no clear indications, however, about what the US plans to do after Afghanistan. What is sure is that, whatever America does, it will further change the Middle East.

US actions will be driven by the dynamism of the insecurity and fuelled by the instinct, by-products of the attacks on Sept. 11. This will be true whether Washington is targeting Iraq or pressuring allies to adapt their existing policies and adopt new ones that will make their societies less likely to produce wealthy young men who are prepared to die in a jihad against America. It remains to be seen whether the target countries will respond as the US expects. Perhaps more likely is that, they too, will allow the instinct to take over the intellect. In which case the repercussions of Sept. 11 which will be much wider that even the US anticipates.

This will be especially true if the regimes in the Arab World do not recognise how the events of 2001 has changed the Middle East as well. The intellect had given way to instinct in this region decades ago, but the Sept. 11 attacks represented what some Western observers believe to be the death-blow to the intellect. Few now anticipate a productive "Dialogue of Civilisations" as espoused by the Iranian President Mohammed Khatami had proposed.

Looking at it in civilisational terms, members of the Western intellectual elite are viewing the Middle East through a different prism than they did before Sept. 11, 2001. Samuel Huntington, the originator of the idea of the "Clash of Civilisations" - have warned in a recent Newsweek essay that the next era will be the "Age of Muslim Wars". Francis Fukuyama, who predicted the "End of History" in another context after the cold war, refers to "Islamo-Fascism" in the same issue of Newsweek. John Keegan, the renowned military historian, has been writing a series of essays that appear to parallel the confrontational attitudes of some radical Islamists.

The implications for the Middle East are tremendous. For the foreseeable future, the justness of Muslim causes - be that of the Palestinians or any one else - will not resonate among Westerners. If pressure is applied on Israel, and it is being applied at present by the Bush administration, it will be done in order to smoothen another area of policy - notably the broader war against terrorism.

Beyond that, no significant pressure will be exerted on Israel to make concessions over and above what its population will tolerate. This is simply because reactions to the events of Sept. 11 have reconfirmed in the American mind that Israel is a more reliable friend in the war against terrorism than any of its allies in the Arab World, be that Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Jordan - all of whom were muted in their public response because of the latent domestic support for the action.

The war against terrorism now has the full focus of the American political, intellectual, military and economic power. The US plans to carry it to its conclusion, like they did with the cold war against the Soviet Union, at first sight a more formidable enemy. The implications for the Arab World beyond 2002 are ominous (see SBME of this week's Diplomat).