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COMMENTARY
November 21, 2001
Wide horizons
"Optimism" is not my middle name but in reading what I can of Arab and Muslim media and government pronouncements (i.e. the part that is in English or translation) over the past few weeks and especially over the last few days I have found it hard to tamp down. It is still only a vague and general impression but I think a change may be coming a "pan-Arab" change of attitude on a scale beyond what we have already seen in Russia and Pakistan and indeed in Europe. The Americans have led decisively and the world on balance has been inclined to follow. Governments and whole peoples who were deeply sceptical of U.S. motives and strategy are individually and collectively thinking again. Partly it is the shocking speed with which the situation in Afghanistan was turned around the speed at which the Taliban has been collapsing. And partly it is the tone struck by the Bush administration; especially by Donald Rumsfeld but also by Colin Powell and of course President Bush himself. There has been straight talk from them there have been no games and little media posturing. Or so far as there has been posturing -- in Mr. Bush's reiterations that this is a war against terrorism as if Islam had nothing to do with it; in his convening of the Iftar banquet for Muslim ambassadors on Monday -- it has been a fine posture. For he is determined not to grant the "battle of civilizations" that Osama bin Laden has declared; that is the raison d'etre of the "Islamist" madrasas. He will take the high road and he will make it pay dividends. With the United Nations floundering as is its wont over the brokering of an interim Afghan government Mr. Powell's state department went to work. There were moments on the weekend when it appeared that the whole effort was a shambles; when it seemed that the old and hated government of Burhanuddin Rabbani would simply reinstall itself and the lines would be drawn for yet more interminable civil wars in Afghanistan Uzbeks v. Tadzhiks both v. Hazars the Shia v. the Sunni Pashtuns v. all. And we are not yet home free. But Mr. Powell acting behind the scenes with force and authority succeeded in knocking all heads together and the conference will proceed near Berlin. He did this at a time when the U.N. negotiator Lakhdar Brahimi was throwing his hands up in despair. (This seasoned Algerian diplomat walked out of this job once before; he is almost too Western to cope with the eccentric demands of Afghan tribal warlords.) Mr. Powell's secret would seem to be an ability to put the whole weight of U.S. power behind his understated requests. It is the charm that brought Pakistan's military dictator Pervez Musharraf to an about-face. But it is not pure brinkmanship. It works because Mr. Powell is able to say This is what we want, and this is why we want it. He is able to convey not only what is the U.S. interest but what it is not. The U.S. has no desire whatever to run Afghanistan the way the Soviets tried to run it; or any other way so long as it does not shelter international terrorists. The U.S. long-term interest in the peace of the region and therefore in its prosperity is reasonably transparent. There is a freedom from innuendo; the pay-offs are frank and over-the-table; there are no promises the U.S. can't keep. I am spelling this out because there is a game going on in the U.S. media on the right-hand side of the political spectrum. Secretary Powell is presented as the "coalition-builder" the pacifist who would sell out U.S. interests if he possibly could -- the man who persuaded President Bush the Elder not to march on Baghdad in 1991 for fear of the "Arab street". And Secretary Rumsfeld is presented as the man who gets the dirty job done. Only the latter proposition is true. The reality is that the younger Bush is making policy now as his father was before him; they are much different presidents. Both secretaries are now acting within a new context and within a strong team. Mr. Powell's job is to build the coalitions without which the United States could not enforce its will; Mr. Rumsfeld has the simpler task of delivering the punches. Each has been so far remarkably successful in his own distinct task. They and the tasks are all necessary to each other. Mr. Powell's address Monday on the Israel/Palestine issue was unprecedented for its candour. Never before had an American statesman said aloud what he was prepared to say. He said if they want peace both sides must stop dreaming. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza must be on the table -- all not some. The very security measures by which Israel has tried to defend itself from the intifada and suicide bombers -- the humiliating checkpoints and body searches that have put poison in the hearts of a whole generation of Palestinians -- are intrinsic to the problem. If there is to be a Palestinian state the option of "hot pursuit" must be surrendered. But more crucially the approach that has been taken by Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian leadership has been intrinsic to the problem. They do not will not grasp that if you want peace you must cease to demonize the enemy. That you cannot talk peace in English then speak of suicide bombers as "martyrs" in Arabic. That if you want the Israeli checkpoints to come down you must remove the reason for them which means arresting the Palestinian terrorists yourself and facing down the consequences. That if you want Israel to recognize the legitimacy of a Palestinian state then Palestine must recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli state with no ambiguity. The Palestinian leadership whatever it is to be must also find common cause with that Israel in defeating Hamas Hezbollah and all other organizations that continue to question Israel's very right to exist. There is no "half way" to such a position. I do not myself see how it is possible to create a Palestinian state given the difficulties that must be overcome; though I am willing to believe in miracles. There is no reservoir of trust between the sides no matter how shallow. Neither Mr. Arafat nor Ariel Sharon seems the man for the hour. And the Palestinian people are trapped between two false hopes both of them now fully deflated. On the one hand the explicitly terrorist organizations which purvey a fraudulent dream of redemption through violence. On the other Mr. Arafat who is as corrupt and sleazy and as uninterested in democracy as any of the autocrats who currently bless the region. What use to the Palestinians is a Palestinian state under a government that treats them no better than the Israelis did and which continues to nurture a culture of grievance because that is the only thing it knows how to do? If there is to be a miracle it begins in Afghanistan and most likely continues in Iraq with the destruction of the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. (The reader will remember I have argued previously that a U.S. attack on the Iraqi regime is a question of when not if.) Paradoxically while it appears that peace between Israel and Palestine is a condition of U.S. operations elsewhere the reverse is more likely true. We must look again at that "Arab street" in the light of what has already happened in Afghanistan. Some weeks ago I was writing about the anti-American and "anti-Zionist" demonstrations of the first Friday after the U.S. bombing began. It seemed possible then that this would grow with the passing weeks; but it did not. With each successive week the number of demonstations and the size of them diminished everywhere from Morocco to Indonesia (with the single exception of Iran). And as I said above the anger the stridency the outrage likewise seems to be abating throughout the Arab media both official and unofficial. And this before that "Muslim world" had begun to look at what the U.S. attack on Afghanistan has accomplished: the destruction of a very evil regime the restoration of traditional freedoms after a generation of warfare a change of heart in the factions and a willingness to coalesce the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid. The Afghans themselves are now telling the Muslim world what it feels like to be liberated from the likes of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. Though this must sound like a Leonard Cohen song democracy is coming, through a hole in the air . And while it never comes to any country in a single evening in a single year the possibilities for great change for something approaching to the fall of the Berlin Wall is suddenly there is suddenly being discussed. I sense this in my own correspondence with various Muslim friends this sometimes dizzying atmosphere when a taboo is breached when a kind of fatalism is overthrown. In the words of one correspondent If this can happen in Afghanistan, what else can happen? Very big changes: though impossible to predict to control even to measure. And it could all end horribly in the unexpected use of weapons of mass destruction by some vicious tyrant under mortal threat. But what if it suddenly seemed to so many who had never previously entertained the possibility that the U.S. was actually on the side of the angels? Consider this. Almost uncovered by the Western media among those demonstrations in the last two months some of the largest have been in Iran both in Tehran and other cities. They consisted of students and other young people protesting against the regime of the ayatollahs -- in their thousands. The demonstrations were put down brutally but they occurred. And do you know that some of these students were waving U.S. flags? For that more than any symbol is what you use to stick it to the ayatollahs. The unfolding victory in Afghanistan is changing the terms of the debate far afield. What if instead of "Islamist" purity with its oppression of women minorities music barbers and kites what the Muslims really wanted was freedom? What if in other words everything we have ourselves been told by such as our faculties of Middle Eastern studies the many politically-correct self-styled authorities on the attitudes and resentments of the Islamic world were proved as wrong as their predictions of what would happen if the U.S. began to drop bombs on Afghanistan? The fact that these experts have been consistently wrong in all previous predictions gives reason for hope. Again within limits. History does not repeat itself and the background conditions in the Middle East in no way resemble those in central and eastern Europe before the Soviet fall; there are many autocratic power centres not one huge totalitarian one. But we do not know what the limits are. Only from our experience of the Berlin Wall that when something very big happens it tends to happen quickly. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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