Manama: Qatar's Emir has voiced concerns that the war on terrorism could become a lucrative business for both companies and mercenaries.
"What we fear is for the war on terrorism could turn into [a series of] commercial transactions and financial contracts with armies of mercenaries who kill outside international [law]. These are all very dangerous things," Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani said.
He added in his address to the General Debate of the 65th Session of the UN General Assembly: "In this first decade, we faced major challenges. We should ensure that war is not the way to deal with them.
"Rather, we should come to terms with ourselves, with this era and with its concomitant progress to turn the new decade, and decades that follow, into a [time] in which major challenges are addressed with more in-depth understanding and knowledge."
The Qatari leader refuted the claim that terrorism could be attributed to the Islamic religion.
"We recognise the existence of certain practices that certainly fall within the purview of terrorism, but in this regard we emphasise two issues," he said.
"First, we disagree with the attribution of this so-called terrorism to the Islamic religion, because this, in addition to being incorrect, is a historical injustice that is refuted by evidence from recent history. In the 20th century, including the second half thereof, gratuitous violent actions occurred in the United States of America, Europe and Asia, but nobody said that this terrorism was American, European or Asian. Rather, this violence was attributed to its underlying political, economic, social and even ideological causes, without attributing it to a particular religion, country or idea."
He also stressed the need for innovative tactics in dealing with the war and expressed his dislike for the term ‘war on terror'.
"But what we have seen and suffered from in the first decade of this century, and which was called the ‘war on terror', was a phenomenon foreign to international politics. It has plunged us into a kind of war with no limits, nor end, nor logic, nor legal or moral conditions. Some of this is still happening and although we note that the current United States administration has discontinued the use of the term 'war on terror', we are still looking forward to clearer and bolder initiatives."
The Qatari Emir said that waging wars was no solution to terrorism.
"This treatment has not achieved security, peace or prosperity. On the contrary, it has spread destruction everywhere, deprived millions of people from their livelihoods, spread fear, and caused the killing and displacing of millions, as well as economic and financial crises that have shaken the stability of the world and undermined the efforts made in dialogue among cultures. We feel that the situation in which we ended up after the beginnings of an intriguing century and its first decade, should not be allowed to continue and its ramifications should not be left to deteriorate unchecked."
