An American on Muslim Street
By Husain Haqqani
The Indian Express , October 7, 2005
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The Bush administration is finally taking the task of communicating
with the Muslim world seriously. The US President has appointed his trusted
counsel and fellow Texan, Karen Hughes, as the under-secretary of State for
Public Diplomacy. Although Hughes has little exposure to the Muslim world,
or for that matter to the world beyond the United States, she has good political
instincts and the ear of President Bush. These qualities make her more qualified
to explore a fresh approach in building bridges than seasoned diplomats with
fixed ideas.
Karen Hughes will look at the problem America faces in explaining its policies
and actions to the international community, especially its 1.4 billion Muslims
and the remedies she suggests will immediately get attention from America's
all powerful President. That is more than the US has been able to achieve
in the field of public diplomacy over the last several decades.
Hughes began her stint as public diplomacy czar with a ‘‘listening tour''
of several Muslim countries. She met with ‘‘opinion leaders'', held a town
hall meeting with women in Saudi Arabia, and impressed almost everyone she
met with her desire to listen and learn.
The conservative US publication, The Weekly Standard, described her as ‘‘Karen
of Arabia'' for her ability to present herself as an ordinary American mother
engaged in people to people relations and not as a high-ranking official on
a serious mission.
According to The Weekly Standard, ‘‘Her unshakable discipline in sticking
to the script has a mind-numbing effect when you watch her through several
events a day''.
‘‘I go as an official of the US government, but I'm also a mom, a working
mom,'' she reportedly told reporters on the flight from Washington to Cairo.
She repeated that theme throughout her tour. At one point she said, ‘‘I still
have to pinch myself a little when I am sitting in a meeting with the king
[of Saudi Arabia] and realize that I'm there representing our country''.
Such humility is unusual in high-ranking officials of any country, let alone
the world's sole superpower. Even if it was scripted, it probably endeared
Hughes to her audiences.
But winning hearts and minds for America requires a process, not just the
event of Hughes' listening tour. As she initiates that process, Hughes should
be careful not to let the ruling elites of the Muslim world control her understanding
of their people and their views of the United States.
Over the years, just as the average Muslim man or woman has been persuaded
to turn against America, a class of rulers, diplomats, global bankers and
media specialists has been produced that lives off its role as the intermediaries
between the United States and the ‘‘backward and complicated'' Muslim people.
These intermediaries between America and the Muslim world live good lives,
often at Uncle Sam's expense. They also come up with reasons why US foreign
policy, and not the failures of Muslim rulers, is somehow to blame for global
Muslim decline.
Thus, lack of American support of the Palestinians or the Kashmiris, Moros,
and Chechens has been the centerpiece of Muslim public discourse over the
past several decades rather than the low human development indicators resulting
from lack of investment in education and healthcare.
No one doubts widespread anti-Americanism in Muslim countries but it may not
be as deep-rooted a sentiment as is sometimes believed. It is often nurtured
by the very elites that the US cultivates.
These elites rent out their support to US policies in return for economic
and military aid and anti-Americanism among the people is sometimes an instrument
of policy for seeking higher rent for the rulers services on behalf of America.
The Musharrafs and Mubaraks of this world appear more appealing as allies
to American policy makers when these rulers are seen as controlling difficult
populations that passionately hate the US.
Ordinary Muslims are not totally unresponsive to America's positive actions
or policies as is sometimes suggested. Significant US military sales to the
Suharto regime in Indonesia, for example, did not win America much support
but, according to polling data released by Ken Ballen of Terror Free Tomorrow,
humanitarian assistance after the tsunami dented anti-Americanism among grateful
Indonesian Muslims.
Successive US administrations have ignored the Muslim Street, being content
instead to depend upon friendly potentates and dictators. But such dependence
also makes the US vulnerable to manipulation by its allies. The deployment
of anti-Americanism among the people, to seek higher rent for cooperation
with the US, is part of that manipulative process.
The new US public diplomacy should not allow itself to be derailed by the
over-simplification that America would be liked much more if only the world
knew its good intentions. Nor should it remain a prisoner of the deviousness
of America's authoritarian allies.
The most important thing is to identify cultural intermediaries and interlocutors
who are as serious about fighting anti-Americanism in the Muslim world as
Hughes herself.
Surely, the beneficiaries of the gulf between the US and the world's Muslims
— those who profit from US aid to stabilise ‘unstable' countries — would not
want the status quo to change.
