Abstract
You don't promote democracy in the Middle East by cozying up to oppressive regimes.
During a November 6 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, President George W. Bush told the Arab world that he will insist
In keeping with its short-term interests, the United States for the last half century has promoted personal, monarchical, and dictatorial rule in Muslim countries. As a result, the United States and these countries have enjoyed mostly good government-to-government relations. But this amicability has come at a cost to the people-to-people contact that would help close the gulf of mistrust and misperception that has only widened since the events of September 11, 2001.
During the Cold War, nearly all Muslim countries were American allies and keenly took part in the struggle against communism. The masses of people supported that struggle, believing that Islam and Christianity were divine religions; they preferred to support the democratic West against dictatorial communism. The Afghan jihad of the 1980s was a unique expression of unity as volunteers from Pakistan and Arab countries flooded into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
But the U.S. government never thought of converting the interreligious harmony and mutual cooperation of that period into a sustained friendship. On the contrary, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Pakistan, as well as those who fought, were abandoned.
Pakistan was left alone to bear the burden of more than three million Afghan refugees. Worse yet, a country that was once a frontline state against communism was shunned by the international community; sanctions were imposed even as the gun culture, drug abuse, and sectarian violence–the worst of which were outgrowths of the Afghan conflict–destroyed its economy and social fabric. Its internal instability was such that Western observers began referring to it as a failed state.
Yet at this critical juncture, democratic institutions, though shaky after 11 years of military rule, restored government authority. But the United States, intoxicated by its position as the only remaining superpower, did not think about the consequences of abandoning its allies.
A new phase of civil war in Afghanistan gave birth to the Taliban movement, which gradually captured nearly the entire country. Thousands of militants from the Muslim world now had nothing to do–jihad had ended, the Russian army had retreated, the mission was accomplished.
Many of the Arabs who had come to fight in Afghanistan were unable to return to their native countries and decided to remain. The Pakistani mujahideen, in contrast, were successfully reabsorbed into Pakistani society in part because the country's religious political parties accommodated them and brought them into the national mainstream. Such a system did not exist in the Gulf States, which made the repatriation of many Arabs impossible. Osama bin Laden and his associates were among the Arab mujahideen who ultimately stayed in Afghanistan. They decided simultaneously to struggle against the United States, which they considered the “mother of all problems.”
Had the United States supported the cause of democracy in the Muslim world earlier, it would not be facing its current dilemma. It is ironic that today in Afghanistan and Iraq the United States is promoting democracy from the barrel of a gun and the bomb-sights of a plane.
The decade of the 1960s marked the golden era of Pakistani-American relations. The two countries entered into pacts against communism; the United States helped Pakistan with its economy and defense, and through technology transfer. In turn, Pakistan served as a frontline state against communism and in addition paved the way for the first high-level Sino-American contact. Military ruler Gen. Mohammad Ayoub Khan was at the helm.
In the next decade, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was elected prime minister, and Pakistani-American relations dropped to their lowest level. Then, in the 1980s, with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States moved to close cooperation with Pakistan–Gen. Zia-ul-Haq was then president of the country. In the 1990s, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz al Sharif were twice the country's prime ministers respectively, and during this period Pakistan was subjected to all sorts of economic and military sanctions by the United States. It was during this era that Pakistan was termed a failed state.
Although it officially claims to uphold democracy in the Muslim world, in fact the United States embraces dictators and supports leaders Washington, D.C., chooses, not those preferred by the people. For most of the 30 years that Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq, he enjoyed friendly relations with the United States.
Of 57 Muslim countries, 38 are governed by dictators or monarchs. The United States maintains relations–or spurns them–on its own terms. Consider the example of Iran. Although there are complaints in Iran of the violation of fundamental rights, general elections have been held and people have the right to openly differ with the policies of the clergy. The ongoing transition in Iranian society should be encouraged, which is what European countries are doing. But the United States calls Iran part of the “axis of evil.”
The United States needs to make more sophisticated differentiations between political Islam and extremist forces in the Muslim world. A number of religious parties believe in democratic and political practices. The current administration in Turkey is an Islamic party; religious parties in Pakistan are important in provincial government, and those parties also form part of a very effective opposition alliance in the Pakistani parliament known as the Mutahidda Majlis-i-Amal (MMA). The Islamic party in Malaysia has been elected in two provinces. Representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood have been elected to the Jordanian and Kuwaiti legislatures.
Recently, Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda's second-in-command, declared in an audiotape that the administration of Gen. Pervez Musharraf should be toppled from power in Pakistan. The MMA, the alliance of Pakistani religious parties, firmly rejected al-Zawahri's call, saying that only the people of Pakistan have the right to decide about their government, and that others should refrain from interfering in their country's internal affairs.
“Inner peace? Wouldn't that be a conflict of interest?”
There is a common perception in the Muslim world that European attitudes toward Muslims are more sympathetic than those of Americans. Their differences on two issues–that of Palestine and of Iraq–are usually cited.
Pressed by the United States, many Muslim governments do not represent their publics' sentiments. Among the public, the more moderate German and French positions are more popular. Then, too, influential European countries maintain more contacts with Muslim countries on a nongovernment basis. Relations between German political parties and Iranian public opinion makers is a good example. This is the basis–a more public diplomacy–that convinced Iran to accept the International Atomic Energy Agency's more stringent nuclear safeguards.
There are many, many think tanks in the United States, but they do not have the sort of relations European groups have with the Muslim world–relations that could be useful in a crisis. There is a serious need to establish long-term relations between intelligentsias from both sides.
There is no commonly accepted definition of terrorism. After 9/11, many ideologues took advantage of the war against terrorism to term the legitimate struggle for the right of self-determination and freedom as terrorism.
In the cases of Palestine and Kashmir, it is more necessary than ever to recognize the grievances of the local populations and encourage the peaceful resolution of conflict. Similarly, it is important to distinguish between Muslim thinkers and warriors like Osama bin Laden. Some analyses in the West put both in the same category.
On the other hand, the Islamic identity of Muslim societies will not be expunged, nor will these societies be secularized. Efforts to do so have failed. Turkey is the classic example–Islamists are once again becoming a major political force.
The way Muslims were treated in the United States after 9/11 has also had a negative effect. One family I know, who lived in the United States for 20 years, moved back to Pakistan because of constant probing by the FBI. It is difficult for American law enforcement agencies to understand that not all Muslims are Arabs–that in fact the majority live outside the Arab world–and that even secular and liberal Muslims living in the West are now feeling a greater pull toward their religion. These trends show up in Pakistan's popular culture as well–famous cricketers like Saeed Anwer and Mushtaq Ahmen regularly take part in religious preaching; pop singer Najum Sheeraz attends classes in Quranic studies in Karachi, and Junaid Jumshaid, a pop idol, now wears a long beard and tells Pakistani youth to obey the commandments of God. This transformation in itself should tell the United States that the approaches it is making to Muslim societies are not successful.