- (july 2011)
The Islamic giants.
One of the bad legacies of Osama bin Laden's career is that for most people
"Islamic" means "Arab". The largest Islamic countries are actually not Arab
at all: Indonesia (202 million), Pakistan (174) and
Bangladesh (145). All other Islamic countries pale by comparison (Egypt has 78
million people, half of Bangladesh). Turkey and Iran (two of the most
visible Islamic countries) have even fewer people than Egypt.
The Islamic giants have one thing in common:
they are all located in the part of Asia that is booming. Spiritually they
might belong to the Islamic world, but economically they belong to the
China-India axis.
Indonesia and Bangladesh are functioning democracies. Indonesia had its own
equivalent of the "Arab spring" in 1998 when riots caused the downfall of the
Suharto regime. Bangladesh even has a tradition of female presidents and
prime ministers. Pakistan might not be a model of democracy and transparency,
but it is the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons.
They all share the same problem with the Arab countries: a rapidly increasing
population, that creates terrible demographic pressures (too many young people
for regions with poor educational infrastructure, i.e. the danger of widespread
illiteracy and unemployment).
What the Arabs have that Indonesia and Bangladesh don't have (in large quantities) is oil. Oil has been traditionally attracting the interest of the developed
world. However, the success stories of China and India prove that there is more
than oil to the future of an economy, and the failures of Saudi Arabia, Iraq
and Iran prove the same theorem from the viewpoint of those that have it.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2010 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (april 2009)
The democratic miracle of Indonesia.
Surprisingly, not even Obama's biography has managed to draw attention to one
of the success stories of the last decade: Indonesia.
In 1998 riots caused the fall of the Suharto regime. In 2001 a woman was elected
president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of the father of Indonesia's independence, Sukarno. In 2004 Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won presidential elections.
Since then Indonesia has experienced a mild economic boom. The war in Aceh
has ended. New elections have been fair and peaceful by the standards of any
new democracy. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world and stands
as an example for the rest of the Islamic world: a multi-ethnic and multi-religious confederation that is led by a secular leader (his predecessor was even a
woman) and boasts the third largest democracy in the world (171 million registered voters).
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (October 2002)
How many more innocents have to die before we eradicate the problem?
The Jihad (holy war) declared by Islam against the rest of the world has
struck Bali, a hindu island popular with Australian and European tourists:
a perfect target, if you believe in the manual of war called "Kuran".
The whole world knows what the problem is, but we live in a strange era in
which we have to deny that we know what the problem is; and thousands of
Euro-pacifists even pretend that fighting the problem is a problem,
rather than a solution.
The real problem, instead, is that we keep ignoring the problem.
The problem is that we let these people hit and hit and hit, over and over
again.
The facts were known for at least 20 years.
In 1983 the Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir founded Jemaah Islamiyah, a
clandestine organization whose goal is the establishment of a pan-Islamic
state all over Southeast Asia.
In 1999 Abu Bakar Bashir
returned to Indonesia and founded the Mujahideen Council, a federation of
terrorist groups with the aim to make Indonesia a purely Islamic state.
By this time they Bashir had established contacts with Osama Bin Laden.
They began training a private army to help Muslims
persecuting Christians in the Moluccas (islands in eastern Indonesia):
hundreds of Christians were massacred by these Islamic militia.
In the meantime the Indonesian cleric Hambali (also known as Riduanisamuddin), a close associate of Jemaah Islamiyah, joined Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, and still is one of its top executives.
In December 2000 these Indonesian terrorists, led by Fathur Rohman al Ghozi, blew up a train in Manila
(Philippines) killing 22 people. There were no Westerners, so nobody cared.
The Indonesian government ignored the detailed accusations coming from the
Philippines and Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists kept training undisturbed in
Indonesia.
In january 2002 Jemaah Islamiyah was planning to bomb the US embassy in
Singapore. Investigations by Singaporean police unveiled the whole story of
terrorism in Southeast Asia and the connection with Al Qaeda.
Singapore informed Indonesia of the whole plot.
Again, noone was arrested in Indonesia (the second largest Muslim country in
the world), despite the very detailed reports coming from Singapore.
Nine months later, 200 innocents are dead, victims
of the ideology of Islam.
Bashir's ideology is, like the Taliban's, inspired to a literal
interpretation of the Kuran. His enemies are not the foreign powers per se,
but all infidels (non-Muslims), whether the Catholics in the Philippines or
the Hinduists in Bali, that promote the trinity of wealth, health and education.
Like the Taliban, the Indonesian fundamentalists want to build a society
with no money, no doctors and no teachers. And, above all, no freedom for
women.
The source of the problem is in a country called Saudi Arabia, and we
all know it.
The problem is called Islam (see Islam kills).
Islam is winning its war against the rest of the world, causing massive
devastation in every single corner of the world, without suffering any
major setback.
The problem is called Islam. And we all know it.
We need to eradicate the very ideology of Islam, the very belief (written in
the Kuran) that every non-Muslim is an enemy.
How many more innocents have to die before we face the problem?
See a timeline of terrorism
Singaporean intelligence on Indonesian terrorists
Role of Indonesian military in Islamic terrorism
An article on Bashir
An article on Fathur
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (December 2000)
Irian Jaya's struggle for independence.
The West has defended for decades the right of East Timor to declare
independence from Indonesia, and Indonesia eventually complied with the
desire of the international community. But hardly anyone has ever sided
with Irian Jaya, the New Guinea province that technically belongs to
Indonesia even if geographically it belongs to another continent.
Irian Jaya declared independence in 1961 but noone paid attention, and
noone paid attention to the continued repression by the Indonedian army.
This week alone, while people were celebrating the anniversary of independence,
the army killed several demonstrators.
The West has never wanted an independent Irian Jaya because 1. its people are
not Christians, therefore not reliable allieds (unlike East Timor, that
will obviously always side with Europeans and Americans), and 2. it houses
the world's largest mines of gold and copper, that formally belong to
Indonesia but in practice are run by Americans (and the Americans, in turn, pay
a hefty "tax" to the Indonesian government for the right to run them).
Bottom line: Irian Jaya is big business, whereas East Timor was a crowded and
poor island of no economic value.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (October 1999)
Suharto's successors struggles to reinvent Indonesia.
The election of the president of Indonesia, to succeed
president Habibie, who took over when dictator Suharto was forced out of
office in May 1998 in the face of growing discontent and student protests,
has been a long and painful process. Megawati Sukarnoputri, the
daughter of Indonesia's founder Sukarno, whose party won 34% of the public vote
in June's parliamentary elections, and general Wiranto, the chief of the army,
which still controls de facto the country and is entitled to a number of seats
in the parliament, were early favorites.
But, thanks to political alliances, the new president is the respected Islamic
cleric Abdurrahmad Wahid, whose party finished a distant third in June's
elections.
Megawati's only credit was the genetic code that links her to Indonesia's
national hero. Like other important daughters of Asia who became living emblems
of a revolution, she has no real experience in running a country.
It may be for the best that the parliament gave the post to a less fashionable
but more concrete politician.
The new government faces four main problems: 1. avoiding religious upheavals
in the world's biggest Islamic country (and, in particular, avoiding a drift
towards Islamic fundamentalism); 2. keeping the country together after the
secession of East Timor, especially since Aceh (in the island of Sumatra) and
Irian (in the island of New Guinea) are no less adamant about their rights to
self-determination; 3. healing the abuses of the Suharto era and preventing
future abuses by his cohorts, by the armed forces, by the financial elite;
4. preventing a collapse of the armed forces (which already occurred in
Timor, where the anti-independence militias were joined by thousands of army
deserters).
Indonesia is the fourth most popolous country in the world.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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