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COMMENTARY
March 3, 2007
Imperialism
As we have said before in this space, and as others have said -- usually more discreetly -- it isn’t impossible to end the tribal and sectarian violence in e.g. Iraq. It is only impossible if the political actors proceed in defiance of their knowledge of its causes.Step one has always been, to think straight. The violence is not coming all from one source. And even though the Islamist fanatics of “Al Qaeda in Iraq” seem to have gained effective leadership over the armed Sunni factions, they achieved this only through tactical ruthlessness. Growing anti-Sunni militancy among Shia factions may be chiefly to blame for much of the current mess in Baghdad, while various tribal interests come into play beyond the city. Yet the large Kurdish region in the north of the country is remarkably placid, and in Basra and the overwhelmingly Shia districts of the south, with well-publicized exceptions, there has been little trouble recently, and the British are now leaving a fairly stable Iraqi-staffed administration behind. The difficulties, as most regional commentators are perfectly aware, are chiefly tribal and sectarian. And while “Islamist” terrorists have exploited these rifts, from both Sunni and Shia sides, they would not be enjoying much success if they did not have such materials to work with. While my reader will know that I am generally well-disposed to the policies pursued by “Bush and Blair”, I flinch more and more at their rhetoric about some “battle of ideas” they imagine to be raging between secular, constitutional, and democratic conceptions of a state, and the fanatical ideals of radical Islam. I myself went to the trouble of writing a whole book manuscript on “Wrestling with Islam”, before putting it in a lead box and realizing that no good could come of publishing it. Not because what I was saying was untrue, but because that dimension of the truth is unhelpful. Yes, we are fighting radical Islam, and yes, radical Islam has a growing purchase on the minds of the world’s young Muslims, and yes, we cannot understand radical Islam without some grounding in the Islam of history, and in traditional interpretations (very plural) of the Koran. But for the purposes of making the world a safer place, there is no useful argument to be had there. Bad religion can only be answered by better religion. One cannot argue with religious fanatics, no one ever could, and the best one can hope is to alter the background conditions in which fanaticism can flourish. To be clearer: tribal and sectarian conflict -- and not some mythic effect of past foreign subjugation -- are at the root of the disorders. But they are not what our Left like to call “root causes”. They are background conditions, in societies riven by tribal and sectarian conflict since time out of mind. The Islamic world is vast and various, not the monolith we fear in our worst dreams. But almost nowhere has it grown out of these ancient conditions, and into the rather boring and homogenized social order we find in the nation-states of Europe and the West. Rule by the tribal lord, or by the strongman above his level, is endemic. We are dealing, throughout the Middle East, not with the idea but the fact of pre-modern political conditions. The fault-lines exposed in Iraq, by the American overthrow of the strongman Saddam Hussein, spread far beyond Mesopotamia and in a crazy quilt from Morocco to Pakistan and beyond. And we are working with a state-system imposed by European imperial masters about 1920, in the aftermath of the First World War, and the collapse of the old Ottoman Empire. A state-system which was seldom reinforced, and has been coming to pieces from continuous tribal and sectarian seismic rattling. The threat to the West from this disorder -- projected to us through events like 9/11 in New York, 3/11 in Madrid, and 7/7 in London -- with far worse, potentially, to come -- has stuck us with the old imperialist role. We have to impose safe order, wherever it is lacking, by much the same military means as the British and French once did (quite successfully). This requires, not a “battle of ideas”, but being ruthless in isolating and punishing any tribal or sectarian affront to the established secular order. It is not a romantic mission. Imperialism seldom was. It is driven by necessity. And we must find a way to focus our wills, only because there is no alternative. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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