CAIRO – Can anyone believe the Taliban leaders when they say that they will lay down their arms and devote themselves to democracy and human rights in war-ravaged Afghanistan? Are they really dismantling their military training camps and using them instead to coach young people, invited to embrace Taliban-style human rights and democracy? These hallucinatory thoughts struck me when I read a letter sent to me by Ms Sallie Kishk, commenting on my article of a fortnight ago, ‘Why Serbia in particular?' Unfortunately, Ms Kishk has missed the point. Moved by her passionate belief in the new image Serbia's government is trying to export to different countries (without setting its home in order and reconciling itself to the minorities there), she has accused me of putting Egyptian demonstrators in Tahrir Square and Christian terrorists in the same basket. I do not know about Christian terrorists; my knowledge in this respect stops at Christian radicals. Anyway, I should remind Ms Kishk that the young Egyptian man who attended the training course in Serbia is a Muslim! The author of ‘Home Talk' escorted his family to Tahrir Square during the revolution to chant slogans calling for the removal of Mubarak's regime. I can – and this is also the right of other people in the Square at the time – confidently claim that my family's voices were very loud and piercing indeed. I regret that my points in ‘Why Serbia in particular?' have been misconstrued. I wish Ms Kishk had had time to read the article patiently and with an open mind, without jumping to premature conclusions. Had she done so, she would have realised that I selected Serbia, which is trying hard to come to terms, locally and internationally, with its past, as a vibrant harbour of democracy-exporting activities. My surprise increased when Ms Kishk claimed that the so-called youth movement resisted the Milosevic regime. Wow! So why were the international forces led by NATO deployed in this part of the world? Ms Kishk should not deny that atrocities committed by the Milosovic regime, in collaboration with radical youth organisations, against minorities outraged the international community and left an indelible scar on the face of humanity. As far as I know (and this is what many people strongly believe) Milosevic, regardless of his arrest and death, was widely regarded as a national hero by the Serbs. If he had come across any resistance from his own people, he would not have dared to kill innocent civilians, young people, children and women. Ms Kishk should let the readers know whether there were mass demonstrations calling upon the late dictator to step down. She cannot be serious when she claims that youth movement led “resistance to the very Milosevic regime that they all deplored”. I'll stop talking and let readers read Ms Kishk's letter published below, so they can make up their own minds. Ms Kishk says: “I must take exception to remarks in Mohssen Arishie's article in the July 31 edition of the Gazette, entitled ‘Why Serbia in Particular?'. The author fails to factually answer the question he raises. Further, the article is full of innuendo, conjecture, and ultimately fear-mongering. “Most of the article focuses on atrocities committed by the Serbian Army during the Milosevic regime, and a statement is made that some April 6 members attended Serb ‘training camps' [Mr Arishie's term] and may have received instruction from war veterans in the Serbian Army. “Actually, only one member is known to have visited Serbia. He attended a one-week workshop on non-violent methods of opposing dictatorships, sponsored by Otpor, the youth movement that led resistance to the very Milosevic regime that we all deplore. “Responsible for toppling Milosevic, Otpor was initially a student movement, then a populist one, some of whose members were inspired by the American academic, Gene Sharp, who has written extensively on non-violent methods of liberation. Interestingly, the Muslim Brotherhood have also read Gene Sharp because their website has posted a pamphlet of Sharp's, ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy'. “But the fact that Otpor, April 6 or the Muslim Brotherhood have studied the non-violent methods of other resistance movements no more makes them agents of foreign governments than it makes Martin Luther King an agent of the Indian government because he studied the writings of Mahatma Gandhi. “Further, Mr Arishie remarks that the April 6 movement members ‘confessed' to SCAF allegations — as if there had been a secret conspiracy. But the Serbian connection has long been a matter of public record. Some months ago, a television documentary on the April 6 movement was aired on Al Jazeera. Furthermore, journalistic articles about April 6, Kefaya and other Egyptian civil society groups are readily available on the Internet. “The last part of this article is rather convoluted. The author attempts to compare April 6 members to Egyptians who went to Afghanistan, trained as mujahedeen and then returned to Egypt and committed terrorist acts; an inept analogy because it ignores the critical difference between populist non-violent opposition and militant terrorism. “A further link is forged to the terrorist Christian cult in Norway. Voila! The Tahrir protesters have been turned into Christian terrorists. I wonder, could the author by some alchemy of imagination transform the Muslim Brothers into Knights Templar? In writing this letter I simply want to counsel against stirring up irrational fear. We have enough to worry about. I hope that the protesters will turn away from confrontation now and focus on community organisation for forthcoming elections.”
