Reforming the Muslim World

Indian Express , April 19 , 2004

During her testimony before the 9/11 commission, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice explained that President Bush was ‘‘tired of swatting flies’’, which is how he saw dealing with terrorism one attack at a time. He wanted a counter-terrorism strategy that was part of a ‘‘broader package of strategies’’. He wanted the evil of terrorism eliminated once and for all.

Judging by the developments of the last three years, one wonders if US counter-terrorism strategy has gone from swatting flies to stirring hornets’ nests. America’s enemies are conscious of America’s awesome military strength. They know that the US can deploy more effective and efficient weapons against enemies challenging the US in conventional warfare. For that reason, terrorist groups in general and Al-Qaida in particular seek to draw the US into several theaters of confrontation, hoping in the process to increase the human and material cost of such engagement.

Counter-terrorism researchers at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) have drawn attention to a 42-page Arabic document called ‘‘Jihadi Iraq: Hopes and Dangers’’. Posted on an extremist Islamist website supportive of Al-Qaida around December 2003, this document appears to be a strategy paper intended for the Islamist resistance within Iraq. Its significance became apparent after the terrorist attacks in Madrid, just days before the Spanish election in March. The Jihadist strategy paper had recommended ‘‘painful strikes’’ against Spain specifically around the time of the Spanish elections, aimed at weakening Spain’s resolve to stay in the coalition in Iraq.

The Jihadist document was ostensibly prepared by the ‘‘Media Committee for the Victory of the Iraqi People (Mujahideen Services Center)’’. The reference to a ‘‘Services Centre’’ (markaz al-khidmaat) echoes the ‘‘Services Bureau’’ (maktab al-khidmaat) established in Peshawar, Pakistan during the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida grew out of the Peshawar Mujahideen Services Bureau in the late 1980s and the resurfacing of a Service Centre for Jihadists in Iraq indicates that the war in Iraq has created a new focal point for militant Islamists instead of being a step towards their destruction. The new Mujahideen Services Centre was possibly conceived by Saudi Jihadist Yusuf Al-Ayiri, who was reportedly killed by Saudi security forces in May 2003.

Al-Qaida’s objective in attacking American targets on 9/11 was to convince its recruitment base in the Muslim world that the US was not invulnerable, thereby creating opportunities to expand its terrorist Jihad. A surgical military operation against Al-Qaida, as well as its financiers and supporters, would have denied the terrorists a wider international audience for radical Islamism. The war for regime change in Iraq, even if well intentioned, has had the opposite effect.

Al-Qaida and its extremist supporters know that America cannot be coerced to leave Iraq by military or political means alone. But according to the authors of ‘‘Jihadi Iraq: Hopes and Danger’’, the Islamist resistance can succeed by making the occupation of Iraq as costly as possible for the US. One of that document’s most important recommendations is to attack American allies present in Iraq ‘‘because America must not be allowed to share the cost of occupation with a wide coalition of countries’’. The goal of the Jihadists is ‘‘to make one or two of the US allies leave the coalition, because this will cause others to follow suit and the dominos will start falling’’.

The Bush administration’s rush to war in Iraq, and the relative indifference towards forging a coalition with traditional allies, is apparently fulfilling the best case strategic scenario envisioned by the Jihadists. In addition to the Spanish, personnel from Ukraine, Germany and Japan have been targeted in Iraq. Terrorist attacks around the world have also become more frequent, as if fulfilling a strategic design for wider mayhem. Instead of dismantling the networks of terror cell by cell, the US is trying to dissuade terrorism by demonstrating its greater military might. The number of terrorist cells is, however, continuing to multiply.

Historically, terrorism flourished in the chaos of the wars in Lebanon and Afghanistan. Iraq is now evoking memories of Lebanon, with the added feature of American military presence. The American military presence is large enough to attract charges of occupation but not so big that it can keep the place fully under control. By waging war in Iraq to topple an evil regime that was not directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, the US has run the risk of over-extending itself militarily. The Shiite uprising in most of Iraq, for example, is not a necessary element of the war against terrorism. It is, however, antagonising Shiite Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere and creating potentially active enemies for the US where none existed before.

Al-Qaida and other extremists know the Muslim mind and seem also to have some understanding of the Bush administration’s approach. They attract massive American military retaliation through violent acts, such as the murder of American civilians in Fallujah, because the collateral damage of military operations adds to resentment of US occupation. The administration’s sledgehammer approach loses America critical goodwill of existing and potential allies.

Adnan Pachachi, a senior member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, described the retaliatory operations in Fallujah as ‘‘mass punishment for the people of Fallujah’’. ‘‘It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah’’, he said and added that he considered ‘‘these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal’’. Two Iraqi governing council members have already resigned in protest over the wider violence. Such chaos in governance and law enforcement in Iraq seems hardly reflective of the well thought out ‘‘broader package of strategies’’ Rice says have been evolved in response to terrorism.

Iraq is not the only area where the administration’s policy seems adrift. The US appears also to be ineffective in untangling the knots that made Afghanistan a safe haven for Al-Qaida. According to Rice, ‘‘Al-Qaida was both client of and patron to the Taliban, which in turn was supported by Pakistan. Those relationships provided Al-Qaida with a powerful umbrella of protection, and we had to sever them’’.

While the Taliban have been toppled from power, the administration’s policy towards Pakistan has been to embrace its military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf. Rice describes this as a new ‘‘carrot and stick’’ policy towards Pakistan. A $600 million a year aid package for five years helps General Musharraf retain power, and his military and intelligence services periodically nab and hand over Al-Qaida figures to the US in return. But the flipping of General Musharraf can hardly be described a policy achievement. Pakistan obviously had strategic reasons of its own to back the Taliban, and for turning a blind eye to Al-Qaida. Those reasons are unlikely to change without a change in Pakistan’s leadership or system of government.

Rice has a similarly optimistic view of Saudi Arabia, another source of non-state support for Al-Qaida. But the Pakistani military retreated in a recent showdown with Al-Qaida supporters in its tribal region bordering Afghanistan and the Saudis can hardly be expected to suddenly clamp down on the extremist Jihadist ideology they have espoused for several decades. All this points towards an ad-hoc flexing of muscle throughout the Muslim world rather than a comprehensive strategy to root out extremist ideologies, promote democracy and eliminate terrorism.

Indian Express , April 12 , 2004

In the 30 months since President Bush’s declaration of war against global terrorism, the US and its allies have ostensibly detained or killed 70 per cent of Al Qaeda’s senior leaders. But the frequency of terrorist acts worldwide attributed to Al Qaeda has increased, compared to the pre-9/11 period. Baby Al Qaedas are being spawned in new regions of the world and a new generation of terrorists is stepping up to take the place of those killed in Afghanistan or detained in Guantanamo. Is the US under-estimating the enemy and not paying sufficient attention to Al Qaeda again? Or is the war in Iraq, and the grandiose scheme to democratise and reshape the Middle East it represents, distracting the administration from the pursuit of the perpetrators of 9/11?

The State Department’s counter-terrorism coordinator, J. Cofer Black, testified last week before the House Sub-committee on International Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Human Rights. In his testimony, the 28-year veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations listed ‘‘some important successes against the Al Qaeda organisation’’ resulting from the coordination of US efforts with those of its allies. Al Qaeda had been deprived of ‘‘a vital safe haven’’ in Afghanistan, most of its known leadership had been decapitated and it had been ‘‘separated from facilities central to its chem-bio and poisons development programmes.’’

But according to Black, ‘‘a new cadre of leaders’’ and ‘‘relatively untested terrorists’’ has started to emerge. ‘‘Al Qaeda’s ideology is spreading well beyond the Middle East’’ and ‘‘has been picked up by a number of Islamic extremist movements which exist around the globe… Some groups have gravitated to Al Qaeda in recent years, where before such linkages did not exist’’ — something that ‘‘greatly complicates our task in stamping out Al Qaeda.’’

Iraq was described by the State Department’s senior counter-terrorism official as the emerging ‘‘focal point for the foreign Jehadist fighters’’. According to his testimony, ‘‘Jehadists view Iraq as a new training ground to build their extremist credentials and hone the skills of the terrorist’’. In short, the war in Afghanistan struck a severe blow to terrorism but the war in Iraq may have resuscitated them. The US will prevail against terrorism eventually but the problem is with us for the foreseeable future. The administration’s desire to proclaim ‘‘mission accomplished’’ rather quickly might actually have prolonged the war against terrorism.

US politicians and analysts have said much about how the war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan should have been finished before starting another war in Iraq. But the conduct of the war in Afghanistan itself has been insufficiently scrutinised. The decision to commit fewer troops to the Afghan war and ‘‘outsourcing’’ the hunt on the ground for Al Qaeda to the Northern Alliance and Pakistan probably enabled Al Qaeda operatives to disperse instead of waiting to be destroyed by US bombardment from the air. The only reason the US feels it has destroyed 70 per cent of known Al Qaeda leaders is that its knowledge of Al Qaeda operatives was limited to begin with. Less known veterans of the anti-Soviet jehad started slipping out of Afghanistan soon after the US started bombing Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. Pakistan did not deploy significant numbers of troops along its border with Afghanistan until December 7, giving Al Qaeda trainers almost two months to slip and spread out. These individuals have most likely served as midwives of the baby Al Qaedas the US now confronts from Morocco to Indonesia.

The core assumption of the US strategy in Afghanistan was that terrorists cannot operate without state sponsorship. Once the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had been dislodged, and Al Qaeda’s safe haven destroyed, Osama bin Laden’s organisation was expected to wither away or at least decline in significance as a source of threat. There was little contingency planning for Al Qaeda’s ability to evolve in new ways, operating without state sponsorship in remote parts of insufficiently governed countries. It is true that Al Qaeda no longer has the elaborate training camps it had while the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. But these camps were partly needed to train soldiers for conventional war in defence of Taliban control of Afghan cities. With no cities to protect, Al Qaeda no longer needs conventional military training. Suicide bombers can be easily trained in the caves of south and eastern Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan, the jungles of Mindanao in southern Philippines and in basements of homes in the Sunni triangle in Iraq.

Ideological motivation for young men to join its ranks is now more important to Al Qaeda than a state sponsor. That motivation has been provided by the haste to war in Iraq. Officials in several Muslim countries have noted a rise in recruitment to extremist groups and even US officials (including Black) acknowledge that ‘‘there are literally thousands of Jehadists around the world’’. These extremists have added anti-Americanism to their local causes, which in the past only involved local separatist wars in remote parts of the world such as Chechnya and Kashmir.

While Osama bin Laden remains at large in Afghanistan or its border region with Pakistan, far more troops and resources have been committed to Iraq than to Afghanistan. There are only 13,500 US troops in Afghanistan, compared with 150,000 in Iraq. 50 countries promised a total of $8.2 billion in aid to Afghanistan at a donor’s conference in Berlin last week after President Hamid Karzai warned that his country could slip back into being ‘‘a haven for drugs and terrorism.’’

The US has promised to double its aid to Afghanistan, raising it to $2.2 billion over the next two years but that is a drop in the bucket in comparison with US spending in Iraq. Afghanistan has massively resumed harvesting opium and now accounts for 77 per cent of global opium production according to the last annual report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. 28 out of 32 provinces in Afghanistan now produce the drug crop, up from 18 provinces in 1999. Drug revenues, estimated at $2.3 billion annually (obviously more than US aid commitments) now finance local warlords and terrorists, including some Al Qaeda affiliates and the resurgent Taliban.

The US and its allies have frozen $130 million in terrorist assets worldwide since 9/11 but that figure pales against the readily available drug money that can continue to finance terrorism for years. If terrorist recruitment is up, Al Qaeda has morphed into something different but equally deadly and terrorist financing continues to increase, victory in the war against terrorism is far from imminent.

Indian Express , April 10 , 2004

In the 30 months since the US President George W. Bush’s declaration of war against global terrorism, America and its allies have ostensibly detained or killed 70 per cent of Al Qaida’s senior leaders. But the frequency of terrorist acts across the world, attributed to Al Qaida, has increased, compared with the pre-9/11 period.

Baby Al Qaidas are being spawned in new regions of the world, and a new generation of terrorists is stepping up to take the place of those killed in Afghanistan or detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Is the US under-estimating the enemy and not paying sufficient attention to Al Qaida again? Or is the war in Iraq, and the grandiose scheme of democratising and re-shaping the Middle East it represents, distracting the administration from the pursuit of the perpetrators of 9/11?

The State Department’s counter-terrorism co-ordinator, J. Cofer Black, testified last week before the house Sub-committee on International Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Human Rights.

In his testimony, the 28-year veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations listed “some important successes against the Al Qaida organisation” resulting from the co-ordination of US efforts with those of its allies.

Al Qaida had been deprived of “a vital safe haven” in Afghanistan, most of its known leadership had been decapitated and it had been “separated from facilities central to its chem-bio and poisons development programmes”.

But according to Black, “a new cadre of leaders” and “relatively untested terrorists” has started to emerge.

“Al Qaida’s ideology is spreading well beyond the Middle East” and “has been picked up by a number of Islamic extremist movements which exist around the globe. Some groups have gravitated to Al Qaida in recent years, where before such linkages did not exist” – something that “greatly complicates our task in stamping out Al Qaida.”

The State Department’s senior counter-terrorism official described Iraq as the emerging “focal point for the foreign Jihadist fighters”.

In short, the war in Afghanistan struck a severe blow to terrorism but the war in Iraq may have resuscitated them. The US will prevail against terrorism eventually but the problem will be with us for the foreseeable future.

The administration’s desire to proclaim “mission accomplished” rather quickly might actually have prolonged the war against terrorism.

US politicians and analysts have said much about how the war against Al Qaida in Afghanistan should have been finished before starting another war in Iraq.

But the conduct of the war in Afghanistan itself has been insufficiently scrutinised. The decision to commit fewer troops to the Afghan war and “outsourcing” the hunt on the ground for Al Qaida to the Northern Alliance and Pakistan probably enabled Al Qaida operatives to disperse instead of waiting to be destroyed by US aerial bombardment.

The only reason the US feels it has destroyed 70 per cent of known Al Qaida leaders is that its knowledge of Al Qaida operatives was limited to begin with.

Less known veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad began slipping out of Afghanistan soon after the US started bombing the country on October 7, 2001.

Pakistan did not deploy significant numbers of troops along its border with Afghanistan until December 7, giving Al Qaida trainers almost two months to slip and spread out. These individuals have most likely served as midwives of the baby Al Qaidas the US now confronts from Morocco to Indonesia.

The core assumption of the US strategy in Afghanistan was that terrorists couldn’t operate without state sponsorship. Once the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had been dislodged, and Al Qaida’s safe haven destroyed, Osama bin Laden’s organisation was expected to wither away or at least decline in significance as a source of threat.

There was little contingency planning for Al Qaida’s ability to evolve in new ways, operating without state sponsorship in remote parts of insufficiently governed countries.

It is true that Al Qaida no longer has the elaborate training camps it had when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. But these camps were partly used for training soldiers for conventional war in defence of Taliban control of Afghan cities.

With no cities to protect, Al Qaida no longer needs conventional military training. Suicide bombers can easily be trained in the caves of south and eastern Afghanistan and North-western Pakistan, the jungles of Mindanao in southern Philippines and in basements of homes in the Sunni triangle in Iraq.

Ideological motivation for young men to join its ranks is now more important to Al Qaida than a state sponsor. That motivation has been provided by the haste to war in Iraq.

Officials in several Muslim countries have noted a rise in recruitment to extremist groups and even US officials (including Black) acknowledge that “there are literally thousands of Jihadists around the world”.

These extremists have added anti-Americanism to their local causes, which in the past only involved local separatist wars in remote parts of the world, such as Chechnya and Kashmir.

If terrorist recruitment is up, Al Qaida has morphed into something different but equally deadly and terrorists continue to raise funds through illicit means such as drug trafficking, victory in the war against terrorism is far from imminent.

Center for American Progress, April 9 , 2004

Condoleezza Rice stated the obvious when she told the 9/11 Inquiry Commission, “there was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.” She is also right when she says that “America’s counterterrorism policy [has] to be connected to our regional strategies and to our overall foreign policy.” U.S. counterterrorism policy and the foreign policy to which it is connected are still flawed. That may be the reason why the number of terrorist attacks worldwide has actually increased, instead of decreasing, after the Bush administration launched the global war against terrorism.

According to Rice, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States opted to fight “a broad war against a global menace” instead of seeking “a narrow victory.” Under President Bush’s leadership, she claims, “the United States and our allies are disrupting terrorist operations, cutting off their funding, and hunting down terrorists, one by one. Their world is getting smaller.” But the post 9/11 world has witnessed terrorist attacks against Americans and their allies in places where there had been no such attacks before. Civilians in Spain, Indonesia, Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey, to name a few countries, have been targeted by Islamist militants. U.S. officials have acknowledged the emergence of a new generation of previously untested terrorists. The deteriorating situation in Iraq also indicates that the war against terrorism is not going according to the administration’s plan.

In his book, “Against All Enemies,” Richard Clarke expressed regret that “America, alas, seems only to respond well to disasters, to be undistracted by warnings. Our country seems unable to do all that must be done until there has been some awful calamity that validates the importance of the threat.” The problem, if I understand Clarke right, is not always failure to obtain intelligence but rather hubris that leads to ignoring “minor” players. The U.S. national security and foreign policy establishment is geared towards dealing with the global system of states. Russia, China, Europe or even India occupies its attention rather than non-state actors such as al Qaeda or for that matter, the Al-Mahdi army of “minor” Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr in Iraq. Terrorists and militias, it is assumed, need state sponsors. Deal with the sponsors and you can bring terrorism or an insurgency under control.

But the 9/11 attacks, and now the challenge facing American troops in Iraq, proves that the threat to global security no longer comes exclusively from states or state sponsored terrorists. In fact, in case of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, it was a non-state actor (al Qaeda) that was sponsoring the government of a failed state, turning the concept of state sponsored terrorism on its head. The village mullahs running the Taliban regime most likely had no clue about al Qaeda’s global plans, including the 9/11 attacks.

Any strategy to deal with this new threat should have had at least three crucial components. First, it should have focused on concerted efforts to locate and liquidate terrorist cells about which intelligence could be obtained. Second, funding and recruitment for terrorist organizations should have been choked off. And third, the ideology and hatred that attracted members to the terrorist groups should have been neutralized.

The war in Afghanistan was meant to eliminate al Qaeda but instead it dispersed several hundred, if not thousands, of its members to Pakistan and Iran, and from there to several other countries. In recent testimony before Congress, the state department’s counterterrorism coordinator, J. Cofer Black, spoke of anti-terrorist operations in 84 countries and admitted that there were “thousands of Jihadists” in the world. This dispersal of al Qaeda after the war in Afghanistan was made possible by the small number of U.S. troops committed to that theater of operation. Even before the war in Afghanistan was over, the administration was planning the much larger military operation in Iraq. The war of choice was receiving more attention than the war of necessity.

The hunt for al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden was delegated to unreliable Afghan warlords and later to Pakistani paramilitaries. The performance of the relatively small U.S. contingent in Afghanistan (10,000 troops and Special Forces, recently augmented by 3,000 Marines) was influenced by political decisions. USA Today reported on March 29 that the 5th Special Forces group, which specializes in the Middle East, was pulled out of Afghanistan in 2002, to be replaced by soldiers with expertise in Spanish cultures. That explains the discovery by National Geographic Adventure magazine’s Robert Young Pelton of resentment against Americans among Pashtun tribesmen along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border for “disrespecting” their culture.

Despite the toppling of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan remains unstable, controlled largely by warlords and drug traffickers. Its remote provinces are still a safe haven for Taliban and al Qaeda remnants. Admittedly many of these terrorists are restricted by their lack of access to modern means of communications and have only limited opportunity of travel but they cannot be counted out until they are either detained or eliminated. The flourishing heroin trade in al Qaeda’s regions of influence means that terrorists are unlikely to run out of money any time soon. Bank accounts frozen so far for links to terrorists account for only $130 million and probably include some wrong leads. Afghanistan’s heroin trade yielded an estimated $2.3 billion last year.

In addition to according a relatively lesser priority to the hunt for bin Laden and al Qaeda members dispersing out of the camps in Afghanistan, the march to war in Iraq has also had the effect of replenishing the ranks of terrorists. The sentiment that the Bush administration is waging war against the world’s over one billion Muslims seems to be growing. The latest poll by the Pew Research Center in several Muslim countries indicates that Osama bin Laden’s favorable ratings are on the rise. This figure is high even in countries whose governments are allied to the United States. Sixty-five percent of Pakistanis, 55 percent of Jordanians and 45 percent of Moroccans view bin Laden favorably. Disapproval of the United States is increasing.

International relations might not be a popularity contest but hatred for the United States feeds into terrorist recruitment and in that sense is a security issue that must be resolved. But the current U.S. administration’s unilateralism, and its refusal to take opinions in other countries into account, is probably aggravating the global threat of terrorism instead of mitigating it. Even if people hated the United States for no fault, addressing that hatred should have been an important component of U.S. policy.

The administration’s proclaimed intention of promoting democracy in the Arab and Muslim world could have helped in dealing with the ideological dimension of terrorism had it not been tied to the war in Iraq. Part of the reason for Muslim anger against the United States is the perception that U.S. support maintains authoritarian Muslim rulers in power. President Bush and his ideological supporters have made the case that by toppling one of the Middle East’s worst dictators, Saddam Hussein, and by establishing democracy in Iraq they would change the region. The argument, however, has not been bought in the region. Critics ask, “Why did the United States choose an oil-rich country with a regime that had defied America as its model for Arab democracy? Why were regimes in Egypt, Uzbekistan or Pakistan not earmarked for transformation into democracies?” The lack of progress in reform in several countries allied to the United States erodes Washington’s credibility as a promoter of democracy.

Muslim moderates, who have been working on their own for political reform and religious reformation in the Muslim world, have also suffered a setback in credibility due to the impression that changing the direction of the Muslim world is now an American project.

As the 9/11 Commission of Inquiry investigates what went wrong prior to that tragic incident, the American people must start examining the mistakes that are currently being committed. The attacks on the United States were made possible by policy failures and not just the failure of intelligence.

International Herald Tribune, December 22, 2003

WASHINGTON It would be better for French authorities to pay more attention to what is inside the heads of Muslims than to be distracted by what is worn on them. France’s Jacobin secularism, with its imitations in the Muslim world, has been one of the reasons more enlightened interpretations of Islam have failed to dislodge the inward-looking medieval orthodoxy that has done much to feed hatred of the West.

Although the recent decision to ban conspicuous religious symbols from public schools applies as much to Jewish yarmulkes and Sikh turbans as to Muslim head scarves, it is Muslims who are most likely to construe it as an attack on their religion. And the perception that Islam itself, rather than its fanatical or violent manifestations, is under attack from an ascendant West has been the main source of recruitment for militant Islamist groups.

Many Muslims translate secularism as lack of religion, particularly in light of the historic attempts by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, the Baathists in Iraq and Syria, and Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia to enforce a brand of secularism similar to the one preferred by the French. Muslim societies might have embraced secular politics more readily if secularism had been seen as representing a commitment to religious tolerance and separation between clergy and state rather than as an attempt to suppress religious devotion.

Islam’s first major secularist, Ataturk, paved the way for enforced and symbolic secularism at a time when several Muslim scholars were attempting to reinterpret Islamic texts in the light of modern ideas. Given the experience of reform movements in Judaism and Christianity, an Islamic reformation also needed an enlightened theology. But Ataturk showed no interest in the intellectual discourse of reform. He ordered men to shave, forbade the fez and the head scarf, issued decrees to close down religious schools and even mosques, and banned the call to prayer. As a result, in the Muslim mind secularism has become identified with eliminating religious tradition. France’s latest decree will reinforce that sentiment.

American secularism is far more palatable to ordinary Muslims. In the United States, secularism is interpreted to mean that the state cannot promote any specific religion or its practices. Laws are made by elected legislatures but do not derive their sanction from religious texts. Although bigots may exist, as in all societies, the force of law is on the side of tolerance. In such an environment, a schoolgirl wearing a head scarf is not deemed to threaten the secular tradition. In fact, any effort to force anyone to change his or her dress, religiously ordained or not, is likely to be met with stiff resistance.

I know from personal experience that mind-sets, and not head scarves, are the real problem facing the world’s Muslims. I grew up in a low-income neighborhood in Karachi during the 1960’s, attended a religious school – a madrasa – part time and was surrounded by people strict about their religious observances. My father prayed five times a day, and my mother covered her head with religious devotion.

But my father, a struggling lawyer, also introduced me to diverse literature on Islam and other religions and encouraged me to educate myself about the suffering of all peoples. He taught me never to hate and shared literature about the Holocaust so that I would not grow up an anti-Semite or a Holocaust denier, especially in view of the easy availability of hate literature in our environment. He sent Christmas gifts to the only Christian family in our neighborhood.

My mother, a teacher, devoted herself to the education of young women, teaching in remote neighborhoods and offering to play host to the daughters of distant relatives so that they could go to school in the big city. She often cited the injunction of the prophet Muhammad, making the pursuit of knowledge obligatory for all Muslim men and women. During Hajj, the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca, she admonished a member of the Saudi religious police for dictating to her what she must do. At the risk of being caned, she quoted from the Koran, “For you your religion and for me mine” and “There is no coercion in faith.”

At 84, my mother still covers her head when she goes out in public. So do her two daughters, my sisters, but none of her daughters-in-law or granddaughters wear head scarves. My mother is devoutly religious and equally an advocate of religious tolerance and modernity. She has brought up children who oppose bigotry and extremism in the name of religion. She did not approve when the Taliban forced women to wear burkas, arguing that what one wears is a matter of personal choice.

Al Qaeda supporters want her to give up her moderation to qualify as religious. It’s too bad Jacques Chirac’s France wants her to give up her head scarf to qualify as a moderate.

Home

Center for American Progress , December 12, 2003

Two years after the U.S. dropped its first bombs over Afghanistan in President Bush’s global war against terrorism, the Taliban are reportedly regrouping in the lawless tribal region straddling the Afghan-Pakistan border. Last year, President Bush had described the post-Taliban period as “the new era of hope in Afghanistan.” Congress recently increased aid and military spending for Afghanistan as part of the $87 billion Iraq-Afghanistan supplemental appropriations bill. But the news from Afghanistan, which has slowed down to a trickle due to the media’s unwillingness to put reporters on the ground, is not particularly good. (See Joe Strupp’s ‘Few Newspapers Covering Afghanistan’ in Editor & Publisher Online) Americans are hearing plenty about America’s war of choice in Iraq, but almost nothing about the war that, had it been better funded, planned and executed might actually have done something to arrest the threat of terrorism. The news is not good. Here’s some of what we’re not seeing or hearing.

In addition to the resurgence of the Taliban, Afghanistan has resumed harvesting massive amounts of opium and now accounts for 77 percent of global opium production according to the latest annual report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Twenty-eight out of 32 provinces in Afghanistan now produce the drug crop, up from 18 provinces in 1999. Cultivation has spread outside the traditional eastern and southern producing areas. The 3,600 tons of opium produced in Afghanistan last year was processed into 360 tons of heroin. The total revenues of poppy farmers and traffickers amounted to more than half of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product of $4.4 billion. Drug money now finances local warlords and terrorists, possibly including the resurgent Taliban.

In military terms, the Taliban pose no significant threat to the 10,000 American troops based in and around Kabul. Their guerilla attacks have served only to scare away civilian aid workers and to limit foreigners to the environs of Kabul and other large cities. There is no chance that the Taliban will re-establish themselves as the rulers of any significant part of Afghanistan any time soon. But the absence of effective government and the persistence of security problems mean that an Islamist underground in Afghanistan will not be easily eliminated. The Taliban could continue to make Afghanistan ungovernable and could be serious wreckers of the planned process to build an Afghan democracy when elections are held as scheduled in 2004. Drug money would be another destabilizing factor in those elections. Afghanistan may never have been a candidate to become a new Vietnam, but it is clearly on its way to becoming a central Asian Colombia.

The U.S. moved on to Iraq without first rooting out Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. In their hurry to win the first of many wars against terrorists and their supporters, administration officials over-simplified their strategy for Afghanistan. The poorly-equipped Taliban were bombed from the skies by the U.S. Air Force and pressured on the ground by troops of the Northern Alliance. When they abandoned the capital, Kabul, victory was declared and Hamid Karzai’s government was installed through an internationally brokered settlement. But the Taliban were allowed to melt into the countryside, and go across to Pakistan, which had been their ally and mentor before 9/11.

An international force was sent in to secure Kabul but security in the provinces was entrusted to local warlords. Although the Karzai government is struggling to expand its writ throughout the country, it is poorly funded and insufficiently equipped. In the first two years, the United States spent $11 billion a year on its military forces in Afghanistan and only $900 million on reconstruction aid. A Rand Corporation study of recent nation-building efforts showed how the Bush administration tried to rebuild Afghanistan – the country where the 9/11 attacks were planned by Al-Qaeda under Taliban rule – on the cheap. Compared with 18.6 international peacekeepers per 1,000 people in Bosnia and 20 in Kosovo, the 4,800 person international peacekeeping force in Kabul amounts to fewer than .2 people per 1,000 Afghans. Even if we include the 11,500 (mostly U.S.) combat troops, we are still left with fewer than one per thousand. Per capita foreign aid for the first two years of conflict in Bosnia was $1,390 and in Kosovo $814. In Afghanistan, it is $52.

Afghanistan’s problems are linked, in part, to the continuing tribulations of its eastern neighbor, Pakistan. The United States has looked to Pakistan as a major ally in its ongoing war against Al-Qaeda, beginning with General Pervez Musharraf’s decision in September 2001 to abandon the Taliban, whom Pakistan had previously supported. Although Pakistan has cooperated with the U.S. military and law enforcement in capturing Al-Qaeda leaders and operatives, it remains ambivalent regarding Islamist violence in the Himalayan territory of Jammu and Kashmir, over which it has an ongoing dispute with nuclear-armed rival India. Jihadi elements within Pakistan maintain covert links with global terrorists, making them potential threats to U.S. interests as well as a destabilizing factor in India-Pakistan relations. The Bush administration, however, refuses to acknowledge Pakistan’s military regime as part of the problem.

Washington’s virtually unconditional support and several hundred million dollars in aid have bolstered General Musharraf’s authority. He now appears to have a free pass on most issues from human rights violations to covert support for Islamic militants (See Ahmad Rashid’s article at the Yale Global and mine at the Wall Street Journal).

The Bush administration’s message seems to be that professed Pakistani support for the war against terrorism and the periodic handing over by Pakistan of arrested Al-Qaeda figures is sufficient to qualify Pakistan as America’s ally. The Pakistanis were responsible for arresting almost every significant Al-Qaeda leader now in US custody and the U.S. certainly owes General Musharraf for that cooperation. But Pakistan’s military leadership has a long history of obliging the U.S. in one area to be able to get away with a lot more in other spheres. Support for the Reagan administration’s anti-Soviet Jihad in Afghanistan enabled Pakistan to ensure that Washington turned a blind eye to its nuclear weapons program in the 1980s. Now, once again, a narrowly-focused American policy is strengthening a Pakistani military dictatorship which has a domestic and regional agenda that is not always consistent with U.S. interests.

Pakistan’s regional interests and those of the U.S. are simply not the same. Pakistan’s military leadership views the world from the prism of its rivalry with India. It wants Afghanistan to be a loyal backyard, free of Indian influence. That was the main reason for Pakistan’s pre-9/11 support for the Taliban. Despite professing support for the U.S., General Musharraf and his military colleagues are not willing to shut down the Taliban’s support network in Pakistan. The Taliban are mainly ethnic Pashtuns and share their ethnicity with Pakistanis living in provinces bordering Afghanistan. Musharraf and the Pakistan military want to retain the Taliban as instruments of influence in Afghanistan if and when the U.S. interest there wanes or the Karzai government fails.

For decades, the Pakistani military’s worldview has been shaped by its hostility to India and its desire to retain a dominant role in Pakistan’s politics. For both purposes, the Pakistani military needs the Islamists as, at least, covert allies. The Islamists keep Pakistan’s secular democratic politicians at bay and help create an anti-India frenzy, something the Pakistani military finds useful. That is the main reason that Musharraf, after a strictly-controlled parliamentary election last year, allowed an alliance of Islamist parties to secure power in the provinces bordering Afghanistan. He has reserved his repression for secular democratic parties, accused of incompetence and corruption, while clamping down only cosmetically against Islamist militants.

The Bush administration’s willingness to look the other way over a range of issues, from non-proliferation to support for regional Islamic militants to lack of progress toward democracy, in return for limited support from Pakistan’s military regime will aggravate its problems in Afghanistan. The rise of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban was blowback from U.S. support of the anti-Soviet Jihad in the 1980s, waged in Afghanistan with Pakistan as its staging ground. Just wait for the blowback from the current U.S. engagement in that region.

Indian Express, July 12, 2003

Some Muslim groups in the U.S. have launched a campaign to block the appointment of Daniel Pipes to the board of the United States Institute of Peace. The USIP is a taxpayer-funded institution with a mandate to promote “peaceful resolutions of international conflicts.” Mr. Pipes, a Bush administration nominee, is a scholar of Islam and the Middle East and an outspoken critic of militant Islamists.

Although the Washington Post, among others, has editorialized against his appointment, the controversy should be seen in the context of the civil war of ideas in the Muslim world — between those who wish to reconcile adherence to their faith with modernity and those seeking the restoration of a mythical glorious past. The Pipes nomination has become a test of strength for those Islamists who wish to paint the war against terrorism as a war against Islam. If they can rally American Muslims to their cause, they would be able to limit the scope of debate about Islamic issues within parameters set by them. That objective doesn’t serve the interests of the U.S. or of Muslims.

Many Islamic revivalists, or Islamists, have turned to terrorism in an effort to destroy the West’s military, economic, cultural and technological domination. Above all, they resent and resist the free flow of ideas within the Muslim community and with the West. In dealing with terrorism, the U.S. cannot afford to ignore the ideas — and the lack of openness in Muslim discourse — that generate terrorist thinking. While his detractors label Mr. Pipes an “Islamophobe,” the tussle is less about Daniel Pipes and more about the terms on which the U.S. should engage the world’s Muslims, including many American citizens. Mr. Pipes is probably not always right in all his arguments. As a Muslim, I disagree with several of his policy prescriptions. But his views are neither racist nor extremist; they fall within the bounds of legitimate scholarly debate.

Muslims have suffered a great deal from their tendency to shun discussion of ideas, especially those relating to history and religion and their impact on politics. Hard-liners won’t tolerate questioning of their views that Islam has nothing to learn from “unbelievers” or that Muslims have a right to subdue other faiths, by force if necessary. The notion of an Islamic polity and state — supported by extremists, questioned by moderates — is also an issue which must be aired. Promoting such debate should be an essential element of U.S. engagement with the Islamic world. That objective is better served by including and debating the ideas of intellectuals such as Mr. Pipes than by attacking them.

Americans are keen to understand why some people hate them enough to want to fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up while trying to kill civilians. But similar introspection is missing among Muslims. Shouldn’t they be asking themselves why it’s difficult for them to criticize terrorism without fearing that they’ll be labeled anti-Islamic? Just as the U.S. needs to understand why Muslims resent its power, Muslims must figure out why they cannot win America’s trust and respect.

Islam’s external enemies, and their real and perceived conspiracies, are the focus of most discourse in the Muslim world. Colonial rule and, since then, injustices meted out to Muslims under non-Muslim occupation in several countries are real issues that need to be addressed. But the failure of Muslim societies — in particular the leaders — to embrace education, expand economies or to innovate cannot be attributed solely to outside factors. The root causes also lie in the fear of some Muslims to embrace reasoned debate and intellectual exchange, lest this openness somehow dilute the purity of their beliefs.

The campaign against Mr. Pipes is an example of this tendency to scuttle discussion. Muslims who disagree with his views should respond to him with arguments of their own. Slandering him might help polarize secular and Islamist Muslims, but it won’t raise the level of discourse about Islamic issues. It’s time for Muslim leaders in the U.S. to break the pattern of agitation that has characterized Muslim responses to the West.

Indian Express, July 12, 2003

President George W. Bush’s personal efforts to secure a Middle East peace settlement in the hope that this would reverse the rising tide of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world have not yet had that desired result. An overwhelming majority of Muslims still remains skeptical of US intentions. Muslim public opinion does not seem to believe the American President’s repeated assertion that the US-led war against terrorism is not a war against Islam.

The decision by some American Christian evangelist groups to proselytise aggressively in the Islamic world, portraying Islam as an evil and terrorist religion, is likely to further enhance that perception. One evangelical group, Arab International Ministry leads crash courses on Islam and claims to have trained 4,500 American Christians to proselytise Muslims. Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jerry Vines have offended Muslims and Christians alike witinsulting remarks about Islam and Muslims.

No one can deny any religious group the right to seek converts through persuasion. But the American evangelists are likely to undermine US foreign policy, given their close political links with the present administration. The US government would have to ensure that the evangelist mission to spread Christianity is not seen as being intertwined with Washington’s stated military and political mission of changing the Middle East.

The US goal in the war against terror must be to eliminate extremist Islamist groups that threaten the world’s security. Helping moderate Muslims reclaim the intellectual and ideological leadership of Islam’s fellowship of believers (the Umma) can more easily attain that goal than trying to convert more than one billion Muslims to Christianity.

The war in Iraq has definitely increased the number of radical Muslims believing in the inevitability of a clash of civilisations and the need to stand up and be counted for their religious fellowship. Only five of the 57 nations that form the Organisation of Islamic Countries publicly joined President Bush’s coalition of the willing for the war in Iraq. On the eve of the war, public opinion surveys in traditional US allies Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Jordan showed less than ten percent of those surveyed expressing a positive view of the United States. A post-war survey by the Pew Research Center for the people and the Press suggests that the ‘‘the bottom has fallen out of support for America in most of the Muslim world.’’

This growing Muslim disenchantment with the US highlights the need for bolstering moderate Muslims who seek reconciliation with the West. Until now the US has described as moderate those Muslim rulers who support US foreign policy. But many of these dictators have become a liability for the US as opposition to their authoritarianism is expressed in support for radical Islamic groups, which also target American interests. The US must now identify Muslim leaers of moderate thought as its allies. These scholars and activists would counter the obscurantism of religious extremists, paving the way for the transition of Muslim societies to modernity and for Islam’s coexistence with an ascendant west.

America’s problem with the Muslims is not limited to the Middle East and Central Asia. In distant Indonesia, 5000 miles away from Iraq and 9,000 miles from the US West Coast, several hundred thousand protestors railed against the United States, some in towns too remote to be covered by western reporters based in Jakarta. Even secular Indonesian scholars met with the US ambassador to express concern that the war in Iraq had ignited religious radicalism in the world’s most populous Muslim country.

In his recent book Islam Under Siege (published by Polity Press, U.K.) Professor Akbar S. Ahmed has called for inclusive dialogue between Muslims and the West as the key to avoiding the clash of civilisations desired by some and predicted by many. As one of the most well known Muslim scholars in the western world, Professor Ahmed has tried to make sense of Muslim history and political thinking for western readers. He has pointed out that the Muslim world has had both exclusive and inclusive tendencies. The exclusive tendency has focused on excluding outside (especially western) influences while the inclusive trend acknowledges the need to learn from others while maintaining one’s core beliefs.

Islam Under Siege highlights the dilemmas faced by Muslims in the post September 11 world and advocates embracing the inclusive approach, which he associates with Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, among others. The growing Muslim disenchantment with the US highlights the need for bolstering moderate Muslims who seek reconciliation with the West. Until now the US has described as moderate those Muslim rulers who support US foreign policy. But many of these dictators have become a liability for the US as opposition to their authoritarianism is expressed in support for radical Islamic groups, which also target American interests. The US must now identify Muslim leaders of moderate thought as its allies. These scholars and activists would counter the exclusionist thinking of religious extremists, paving the way for the transition of Muslim societies to modernity and for Islam’s coexistence with an ascendant west.

While seeking moderate Muslim allies, the US would do well to advise Christian missionaries against complicating the political equation. The White House should distance itself from the impression that the emerging American empire has any religious mission or that churches will inevitably follow the flag. In any case, co-existence with a democratised Muslim world is a more realistic target for American foreign policy than the project of massive religious conversion. The experience of European missionaries that followed colonial powers into the Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia, show that persuading Muslims to give up their religion en masse can be a difficult proposition. After over a hundred years of British colonisation in India, for example, missionary activity was far more successful in remote regions inhabited by animists than among the Muslims or Hindus. Missionaries have, on the other hand, generated a fundamentalist Muslim backlash in several countries, notably Nigeria and Indonesia.

The Middle East’s Christian populations are, by and large, the descendants of early indigenous Christians rather than the product of proselytising by colonial Europeans. The Assyrians, Chaldeans and Copts became Christian before Europe embraced Christianity. Even they might look upon swarms of American evangelical missionaries as intruders into their traditional way.

All religious groups, including the evangelicals, are well within their rights to extend their religious message to others without causing offense. But to tie efforts to ‘‘woo Muslims away from Islam’’ to the global war on terrorism could be disastrous. Al-Qaeda and other groups have been telling Muslims that unless they fight the west, through terrorism, their religion is in danger. For every convert away from Islam, there are likely to be many more Muslims that shed faith in reconciliation with the west for such radical beliefs. Such polarisation might be desirable from bin Laden’s point of view. It is not what America needs, or wants.

Indian Express, April 4, 2003

‘‘Show them no pity. They have stains on their souls.’’

To those familiar with anti-western rhetoric in the Arab and Muslim world, the above might sound like a line out of an Al Qaeda statement. In fact, it comes from the exhortation by a British commander, one Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins to be precise, to his troops in Iraq.

For moderate Muslims who have, for years, argued for reconciliation with the West, the war in Iraq is becoming their worst nightmare. Moderation in the Islamic world might turn out to be the most significant casualty of this war.

Everyday fresh images of destruction of the historic capital of Islam’s caliphs, Baghdad, are beamed into Muslim homes, courtesy a vibrant and increasingly independent Arab media. The emphasis here is on the death and destruction caused by a precision-guided Goliath relentlessly pounding a largely helpless David already debilitated by sanctions.

That the war was not provoked by an immediate casus belli, does not have broad international support and is seen as an American war of choice even by some of its supporters does not help.

Over two weeks into war, the weapons of mass destruction that the US-led coalition went in to eliminate have not been found or seen. There has been no popular uprising by the Iraqi people to support the invading troops. Progress in the march to Baghdad is reportedly good but slow compared to the expectations built by the Bush administration.

To make matters worse, Coalition military sources and their embedded journalist partners have ended up circulating half-truths and outright fabrications, unnecessarily eroding their credibility despite their overwhelming advantages.

The otherwise deceptive and dishonest Iraqi Baathists are looking increasingly like beleaguered defenders under attack, rather than the hated authoritarian regime they actually represent.

British and US 24-hour television news stations remain obsessed with the technological superiority of the Anglo-American Alliance and on repeating claims and rhetoric that fail to take into account historic realities or Muslim sentiments.

In fact, key segments of the Western media have been badly hurt by the impression that they have allowed themselves to be inducted into the psychological operations of the US-British military effort. Claims about the fall of Umm Qasr were broadcast nine times and three days earlier than the port city’s actual subjugation. Stories about the discovery of a chemical weapons facility near Najaf and the surrender of the Iraqi 51st Division turned out to be untrue. The reported fall of Basra to British troops on the third day of the war did not materialises after over a week.

The family of a British soldier alleged to have been executed by the Iraqis denied Prime Minister Blair’s assertion in this regard, saying the Army told them their son had been killed in action. And the British have had to retract their claims about the capture of an Iraqi General after circulating them through the BBC and CNN.

The US networks, in particular, have acted more as cheerleaders for their country’s war-machine than as independent sources of news. There is little interest in reporting on civilian casualties or hardship and there seems to be little desire to guard against being spun by those leading the charge.

Al-Jazeera, which has shown greater professional competence and integrity than the US cable news networks, is being viciously attacked for being an Arab news network as if being Arab was a crime.

Those Muslims who looked up to and hoped to emulate the higher ethics of Western democracies find this partial adoption of the propagandist ways of dictatorships by the free world very disturbing.

Few people in the Muslim world like Saddam Hussein. In fact, most commentators and observers recognise his role in bringing destruction to the Iraqi people. But at the same time, the Bush-Blair war is widely seen as an effort to occupy Iraq, not one to liberate it.

The British and the Americans have not been able to convince many Muslims that their military effort is a humanitarian project. Why else has Britain allocated only £ 210 million out of a war budget of £ 3 billion for humanitarian assistance? The US allocation for humanitarian work is a meagre $ 2.4 billion out of an estimated budget of an approximate $ 75 billion. Surely, after allocating more money to fighting than helping the people, the coalition should not expect its efforts to be seen as anything other than a military conquest.

From the point of view of the Muslim moderates, the Iraq war is polarising the world between a Muslim ‘‘us’’ and a Western ‘‘them’’. It is no longer easy for Muslim modernists to praise the West’s moral purpose when US leaders emphasise their power at the cost of their ideals.

Since the first strike aimed at decapitating Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership, all we have heard from Washington and London is how there is no doubt that their superior military technology will prevail. A post-occupation American governor for Iraq has already been identified.

Some contracts for Iraqi reconstruction have been parceled out among favoured US companies. US and British marines have put in greater effort to secure the Rumailah oil fields than in providing water to thirsty civilians in southern Iraq. Is it surprising then that promises of building an Iraqi democracy and making a new beginning in the Middle East are not being taken seriously by an overwhelming majority in the Arab-Islamic world?

Recent polls show that approval for the US stands at less than ten per cent in almost every Muslim majority country polled. There is, of course, no moral equivalence between the western democracies and a totalitarian regime that used chemical weapons against its own people.

Saddam’s regime represents an anachronistic Stalinist system which disregards human rights and civil liberties. Even at their worst, the US and Britain represent far greater adherence to norms of civility than Iraq’s Baathist regime has done in its entire history.

But the recent conduct of the US towards Muslims and the Muslim world has been a particularly low point for those in the Muslim world who admire the United States as a leader of the free world. Beginning with the televised images of blindfolded prisoners in chains from Guantanamo to the post-9/11 violations of civil liberties of ordinary Muslims in the US and the conduct of the propaganda war in Iraq, the Bush administration has seemed willing to continually lower the moral bar for itself. It is as if Washington is stooping to the same level where it finds its ‘‘enemies’’.

The US has decided to ‘‘shock and awe’’ instead of trying to ‘‘befriend and embrace’’ the world’s one billion Muslims. The underlying assumption, articulated by neo-conservative intellectuals as well as by historian Bernard Lewis is that the Arab-Islamic world has never been receptive to Western idealism while it fears and respects force.

The problem with building an empire through force is that it remains vulnerable to the kind of sniping that terrorist movements represent. The American public has traditionally shown little appetite for empire or for protracted conflict. Moreover, Israel’s experience in the West Bank and Gaza, and Russia’s in Chechnya, disproves the theory that overwhelming force can persuade Arabs and Muslims better.

Instead of marginalising Muslim moderates by setting aside its own ideals in favour of a policy based solely on demonstrations of power, the US should review its relationship with the world of Islam.

There is a long tradition of Muslim leaders looking up to the West. Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, told a peasant who asked him what westernisation meant: ‘‘It means being a better human being.’’ Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah cited the Englishman’s sense of justice and fairplay as the value that bound Muslims with Westerners.

Even the religiously conservative founder of Saudi Arabia, King Abdel Aziz, allied himself to the United States because he found God-fearing Americans better than God-less Communists. Seeking out democratic allies in the tradition of these elders would have ensured Muslim friendship for the West more effectively than raining tomahawk missiles on Iraq.