Author:
Publication: The News International
Date: October 13, 2001
STOCKHOLM: Nobel Literature Prize
laureate V S. Naipaul expressed sorrow on Friday at the terrorist attacks
last month in the United States but also lamented the approach taken by
all sides involved in the new US-led war on terrorism.
"The attack in America has depressed
me enormously," the Trinidad-born British author told Sweden's SVT1 state
television network. "It is a catastrophy, it is a tragedy, it will make
our world a less happy place." The 69-year-old writer, who won the 2001
Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, however questioned the way both
the West and its declared adversaries in the conflict were responding to
the attacks, saying there was insufficient reflection and comprehension
on both sides. "I'm not sure the method now being used is a complete method,"
Naipaul said of the US-led campaign. "I would have thought that the powers,
the great powers, would have understood that instead of their military
action there was something like an indemnity to be required, to be imposed
on certain countries." Referring to states accused of harbouring terrorists,
Naipaul said the onus "to cleanse themselves of terrorists... should have
been on their shoulders" through, for example, a total freeze on all the
state's assets in the world well before the September 11 attack.
That attack was "a calamity, it
has immense proportions, it will affect the world," he said. Naipaul, whose
1981 book "Among the Believers: an Islamic Journey" examined roots of Islamic
fundamentalism, criticised states like Afghanistan which he said relied
too much on blind faith and too little on reason to organise their societies.
"I wish these countries had an intelligentsia who would have brought mind
to bear on their problems, rather than doing what in fact has occured,
which placed them in an even more very difficult situation," he said.
