From: y41@aix320a.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (Jeffrey Hazelwood)
Subject: Re: What do we say to this?
Organization: University of Heidelberg, Germany
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 11:06:30 GMT

In article <m0n0PCr-000Q4VC@jack.sns.com>, trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh) writes:
|> 
|> Send your responses to B.J Cutler. If anybody knows the 
|> address of Scripps Howard News Service, please post.
|>  
|>                        Ignoring Somalia's Crisis 
|>                          WHERE ARE THE MUSLIMS 
|>  
|>                              BY B.J CUTLER 
|>  
|>             AS a compasionate men President Bush really had no 
|>      other choice but to send American troops to halt the 
|>      starvation, bloodshed and anarchy in Somalia. 
|>       His advisers and his own experience told him a distressing 
|>      truth: if the United States did not take on the burden, no 
|>      one else would, and as many as 2 million innocent Somalis 
|>      could die of hunger. 
|>        Even more distressing is that America should not have 
|>      faced the dilemna of either dispatching soldiers or watching 
|>      people die on TV. The several million surviving Somalis are 
|>      Sunni Muslims, and their co-religionists had it well within 
|>      their powers to rescue them. 
|>        There are about a billion Muslims in the world They 
|>      compose a maority in more than 60 countries, one-third of 
|>      the United Nations' membership. To think that the Islamic 
|>      states themselves cannot handle a few Somali warlords and 
|>      their teenage thugs is ridiculous. 
|>       Start right in the neighborhood~. Saudi Arabia has 72,000 
|>      superbly equipd men under arms. The world came to the 
|>      Saudi's aid when they were threatened by Iraq, but Riyadh 
|>      shrinks from action to save the Somalis. Is it because they 
|>      are, though Muslim, non-Arab and black? 
|>       And then there is the emir of Kuwait (he of the gold 
|>      bathroom fixtures), back in his palace thanks to Desert 
|>      Storm. His armed forces are small, under 20,000 men. But is 
|>      a company or a squad too much for him to offer Somalia? Yes. 
|>        Egypt and Syria have powerful armed forces, numbering 
|>      420,000 and 404,000, respectively. Each sent a division to 
|>      the Persian Gulf War (when the Saudis were paying the bill). 
|>      For Somalia, Egypt is considering a token force, after the 
|>      Americans secure the ground. 
|>       Sudan trumpets itself     as an Islamic nation. Its 71,000-
|>      strong military is engaged in a holy war against Christians 
|>      and animists in the country's south. Does it have anything 
|>      for Somalia? Don't ask. 
|>       Sudan's patron, fundamentalist Iran, counts 368,000 troops, 
|>      none of whom are doing anything for the Somalis. Pakistan is 
|>      the Muslim superpower, with a military of 666,000. It did 
|>      send 600 soldiers to Mogadishu Airport, but should do much 
|>      more. 
|>        Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation with 192 
|>      million people, has 279,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen. 
|>      Its military is better known for killing Christians in East 
|>      Timor than  helping Muslims abroad. 
|>  
|>       AMERICAN EQUIPMENT 
|>  
|>       Morocco is a U .S. friend whose 196,000 troops use mostly 
|>      American equipment. They are busy seeing that the Western 
|>      Sahara, which King Hassan II occupied in 1976, does not gain 
|>      independence. 
|>  
|>       Other Muslim or largely Muslim countries, with the size of 
|>      their armed forces, include: Turkey, 579,000; Bangladesh, 
|>      106,000; Malaysia, 128,000; Algeria, 126,000; Nigeria, 
|>      106,000; Libya, 86,000; United Arab Emirate, 44,000; Oman, 
|>      26,000; Tan-zania, 47,000, and Albania, 48,000. 
|>       If the 19 countries named above contributed an average of 
|>      1,200 troops apiece to a U.N. peace-mak-ing unit, Somalia 
|>      could be pacified and fed without the United Stats hgving to 
|>      do it. 
|>       On a separate issue, foreign ministers from 40 Islamic 
|>      nations met in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, last week. They demanded 
|>      immediate military interven-tion by the United Nations to 
|>      halt Serbian slaughter of Bosnian Muslims. Presumably, they 
|>      intended the U.N. force to be spearheaded by the United 
|>      States, as in Somalia. 
|>       They also called on the Security Council to lift its arms 
|>      embargo on Yugoslavia so the Bosnians could get arms for 
|>      self-defense. They did not decide to take action in Bosnia 
|>      themselves. 
|>  
|>      B.J Cutler is foreign affairs columnist for Scripps Howard 
|>      News Service 
|>  
|> 

What we say is that it is absolutely true!  Unfortunately, most Muslim
Nations talk alot more than they deliver.  How many nations are rushing
off to help Bosnia??? 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey T. Hazelwood                    Universitt Heidelberg
EMAIL: y41@ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de       Heidelberg, Germany 

                                     *

                                   /////    /////         //
                                  /     /    //////      /  /
                                  /     /    //////     /    /
                          /        /   /      ////           //
                          //////////////////////////////////////
                         /                            
           /           //                                  *
           /////////////
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic