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COMMENTARY
October 13, 2001
Riot & obstruction
Across the Islamic world from Morocco through Indonesia the street erupted after prayers yesterday. Inflamed by radical preachers from the pulpits of mosques mobs were formed shouting "Death to America" not only in Karachi Peshawar Tehran Djakarta. Even in urbane European Istanbul police were obliged to use tear gas against rioters in their thousands. Muslims took to the streets in cities across India; in Albania's Tirane; in "liberated" Kuwait; in Kenya's Nairobi and Mombasa. Some of the largest demonstrations were in Cairo under the nose of Hosni Mubarak formerly America's closest Arab "friend". In Karachi American fast food outlets were torched and cars set alight while police fought back with lathi sticks tear gas and gunfire over the rioters' heads. Gunfire was returned from the mob who then struck against government buildings. Paradoxically the most moderate protests were among the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza where Yasser Arafat gave orders to begin shooting demonstrators this week in a last desperate bid for American support -- delivered characteristically after giving the Bush administration final reasons to give up on him. While around the world the vast majority of Muslims went home quietly from Friday services and the majority of the ulema desisted from inflaming the crowds we began to see what a "small minority" of millions is capable of doing. I fear yesterday was a mild foretaste of what is to come. For the crowds are still responding to a limited phoney war -- one which is still restricted to Afghanistan and a Taliban regime that is almost universally despised among Muslims. But this war -- the anti-terrorist operations -- must inevitably spread to other countries. There is no way the U.S. or its allies can now be satisfied with just Osama bin Laden; the threat from terrorism will not end with him. The terrorist cancer has spread through the world; it is hosted within almost every Muslim state whether with or without the invitation of its government. And the attitudes that feed terrorism -- the sense of defeat and despair the craving for mediaeval certainties the stark resentment and envy of Western success -- has infected every stratum of Islamic society. These are the hard facts this the reality with which we are dealing. It is a hunger a longing that can't be appeased and must be somehow confronted and eventually disarmed. No amount of American humanitarian assistance makes the slightest difference to the mob. No reassurances from President Bush and others that "this is not a war against Islam" will be believed. Cautious distinctions between terrorism and "liberation struggles" have already gone out the window. The achievement of a Palestinian state would make precious little difference. For underneath the surface of present events a deeper substance is coming to the boil. Through two centuries Islam itself has been trying with varying degrees of unsuccess to come to terms with an "infidel" modern world and now the lid is rising on the whole stupendous cauldron. While it is true that fanatic Islamist parties have never commanded more than seven per cent of a vote in the rare circumstances where free elections have been allowed at any level of government (with the possible exception of Algeria) -- the proportion of society that is truly "Westernized" - "middle class" and educated to modern norms - is nowhere significantly larger. Between these two extremes within every Muslim-majority state except Westward-aspiring Turkey are the confused and powerless masses; people who have never been asked to assert themselves in "civil society"; whose identities are not individuated in the political sphere; whose loyalties are ultimately tribal. From Morocco to Indonesia from Kazakhstan to Sudan we see the spectacle of Islamic political failure. Every regime with the singular exception of Turkey is a tyranny that relies on force. Each government is in the hands of a "family compact" jealously guarding its treasure chest. Every single one of these regimes is wallowing in corruption and dysfunction. General Musharraf of Pakistan alone has had the courage to confront the mob and ally his country decisively with the West; to purge his administration of Islamist sympathizers and engage the zealots in what may well be a battle to the death. More than a month after the attacks on New York and Washington after weeks of some of the strongest diplomatic appeals in modern history it is now clear that Gen. Musharraf is acting alone. The states of Central Asia are following in immediate self-interest against a real threat of chaos spreading from Afghanistan but otherwise there is no statesman anywhere in the Islamic community of nations who is willing to say in plain words to his people: "We are at a crossroads. We are confronted with a very painful choice but a choice we cannot avoid any longer. From this day forward we must be aligned with the West. We must embrace both democracy and modernity must create liberty in the Western way open our society to the world at large. We must disavow corruption and terror and everything else that stands in the way. The alternative the only alternative is to be rent by forces beyond anyone's control. We must make an uncompromising choice between civilization and barbarism between freedom and tyranny between hope and despair -- or the choice will be made by the very devil. My own life doesn't matter; the future of our children is at stake here and even the future of our own true Faith." Instead few of the Arab states have even agreed to freeze the assets of known terrorist organizations or to investigate the various Islamic charities which are known to patronize the Taliban and Al Qaeda (together with any number of independent terrorist cells). Saudi Arabia Egypt Kuwait Qatar and Jordan -- previously considered the West's more reliable allies in the region -- have each refused to give the U.S. and its allies their unstinting help. While offering to provide some intelligence and heavily qualified logistical support each has dragged its feet. The Saudis in particular refuse U.S. investigators any direct access to terrorist suspects including those with American blood on their hands even when the suspects are held in Saudi prisons. The Egyptian government -- which must balance its books not on oil revenue but with massive hard-currency U.S. aid -- has by all accounts been utterly unco-operative. Each is caught in a devil's pact having allowed the development of religious fanaticism as a release to pressures against the regime. Each but especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt has actually encouraged the growth of huge charities that fund religious zealots. In the case of Saudi Arabia governed by an extended royal family with 30 000 members it has become clear members of the family itself are playing both sides of the "Arab street". An unknown but probably significant number are implicated in the financing of international terrorism; almost all are willing to give lip service to causes anathematic to Western interests. The Saudi state makes direct welfare payments to the families of Palestinian suicide terrorists against Israel. And all of this to preserve a delicate balance between its own political and its own economic survival - the latter entirely dependent on the huge Western market for oil. American investigators now need to know about the six suicide hijackers who entered the U.S. on Saudi passports; about the nine who came with Egyptian passports. They need to comprehend the domestic Saudi networks through which Osama bin Laden -- son of a prominent Saudi family -- gets both weapons and cash. At a moment when the entire Western world is bracing for further terrorist onslaughts we urgently need Saudi and Egyptian help. And it is not forthcoming. How did this stonewall come about? It has absolutely nothing to do with the fate of the Palestinian people. It has everything to do with the self-interests of the respective Arab governments and leaders. At first they thought by spreading their bets they could balance religious fervour against the threat from Marxist and other secular fanatics that they could syphon political agitation into harmless religiosity. When it became apparent that Islamism -- political Islam -- was a greater threat than Marxism had ever been they decided to cultivate a "mild" and essentially fashionable public anti-Americanism and a passionate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice as a further prop against the popular dissatisfaction that might otherwise be turned on themselves. They did not grasp the degree to which they were playing with fire and now they themselves stand to be consumed in the growing conflagration. For even if they were to suddenly and courageously reverse the policy of a generation -- in the face of the "Arab street" -- they may have neither the legal infrastructure nor the political skill to face down our common enemy. They find themselves cornered and they are playing for time at a moment in history when it appears that their time is up. The Bush administration is likewise playing for time against these obstructions refusing to lose its temper or its nerve and exploring alternatives to every passage. But in the background it is compelled to plan against extraordinary contingencies. In the long run the U.S. and its Western allies may be forced to consider an effective "cordon sanitaire" around the whole Muslim world -- because in the absence of any real regional allies nothing short of this could begin to contain the terrorist threat. The consequences of such a policy for us -- but more spectacularly for the whole Muslim world -- are almost too hideous to contemplate. Which is why they must be contemplated now in capitals such as Riyadh and Cairo. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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