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Beware the light at the end of the Islamist tunnel. |
Islamist Bubbles
The National Interest
CHRISTOPHER ROSS has been in the news. After September 11,
the State Department summoned its former ambassador to Syria and Algeria back
into service as "special coordinator for public diplomacy and public affairs."
On November 3, he appeared on Al-Jazeera satellite channel to present America's
case in Arabic. (As one former diplomat put it, "the scuttlebutt around the
locker room was always that Chris was the man in terms of being able to wrap
significant thoughts in good Arabic.")1 With his many years of foreign
service in Beirut, Damascus, Algiers, and Fez, Ross is credited with knowing the
currents of Arab opinion, and how best to navigate them.
Consider, then,
this prediction Ross made in a keynote address to a conference of public affairs
officers from the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau in September
1993:
I predict, regretfully, that the region is fated to witness a wave
of Islamist revolutions, successful or failed, over the next decade. To me,
this is a likelihood with which we must come to grips. The regimes in place
lack motivation, a vision for change, and support. The democrats have vision
and motivation, but lack support. The Islamists combine all three motivation,
vision, and support....Left to their own devices, the region's discredited
regimes are likely to try to muddle through and repress opposition, its
budding democrats are likely to fall on their faces, and its extreme Islamists
can be expected to become the next agents of
change.2
There is still a year to go before the expiry
date of this prediction, but the Islamists had better hurry up if it is to come
true. In the nine years since Ross gazed into his crystal ball, there has been
no wave of Islamist revolutions. There hasn't been even a single one.
To
the contrary: the "discredited regimes" of which Ross spoke have pushed the
Islamists out of the political arena. They did it in flagrant disregard of Human
Rights Watch, but with meticulous regard for the basic axiom of Middle Eastern
politics: rule or die. The most dangerous of the Islamists Osama bin Laden and
crowd found refuge in remote corners of east Africa and south Asia. From there,
they did unfurl terrorist tentacles into Europe and America. But Islamists no
longer threaten any of the region's rulers. Secretary of State Colin Powell,
writing after September 11, announced that Americans and Muslims share "a
chilling appreciation of common vulnerability to terrorism."3 This was a
politic and sonorous remark, no doubt; but the truth is that no Middle Eastern
state except Israel shares America 's sense of vulnerability to terrorism. The
Arab states solved their terrorism problem by force, notably by expelling
Islamists to places like Afghanistan where they became somebody else's
problem above all, America 's.
This is clear in retrospect. It was not
clear at the time. And if an experienced Arabist like Ross anticipated Islamist
revolutions, what must his less-knowledgeable listeners have concluded? In the
media and the journals, a raft of experts beat the same drum: the United States
would have to "come to grips" with an inevitable tide of Islamist revolutions,
presumably by coddling those Islamists who could not be intimidated or bribed. A
cottage industry grew up around this estimate of Islamism, arguing that it could
be tamed through engagement and dialogue. It is no small miracle that key
Western policymakers never quite bought into the theory. If they had, Ross's
prediction might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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ENTER GILLES
Kepel, a French scholar at the Institut d'Ιtudes Politiques in Paris. Kepel
speaks a fluent Arabic, acquired during years of residence and research in
Egypt. Islamism has always been his forte, demonstrated in two earlier books
available in English translation: Muslim Extremism in Egypt and Allah
in the West. In France, Kepel is a media presence: prolific, provocative,
and photogenic. In the mid-1990s, he revisited Islamism on its own turf,
interviewing its proponents and reading its latest texts. In 2000 he published
his findings under the eyebrow-raising title Jihad: Expansion et dιclin de
l'islamisme. The English translation has a less committal subtitle: The
Trail of Political Islam. But it is the same book, with the addition
of some reflections on September 11. Like the original, it is a superbly written
and deeply informed tour de force.
Kepel sets out to explain why
the dire predictions missed the mark. His argument is simple but persuasive. In
the generation that followed independence in the Muslim world, education
expanded dramatically, extending beyond the nationalist elites. But the ruling
establishment, jealous of its powers and privileges, blocked the ambition of new
social groups. Islamism is the invention of those who missed out on the
post-colonial division of spoils. It is the doctrine of a frustrated
intelligentsia, and their license to defy the existing order.
But
nowhere have the Islamists ever been numerous enough to seize power from
entrenched regimes on their own. So Islamists have turned to two potential
allies: the devout bourgeoisie, to provide the means; and the masses of the
urban poor, to fill out the ranks. In Iran, these three groups intelligentsia,
middle classes, urban poor came together in one movement, producing a
revolutionary explosion. Everywhere else, Kepel has discovered, one of the three
crucial elements has been missing, and failure has been inevitable.
The
clearest examples of this, covered at length by Kepel, are Algeria and Egypt. A
decade ago, the pages of Foreign Affairs carried typically grim forecasts
of impending Islamist triumphs in both countries. When the Algerian regime
aborted the elections that nearly brought Islamists to power in 1991, a frequent
contributor, Robin Wright, assured readers that their success had only been
delayed. The regime's action was "like the abortive Moscow putsch in 1991;
although the process may take longer, it will fail for similar
reasons."4 When Egypt faced Islamist terror in 1993, Stanley Reed warned
readers: "For the United States it is impossible not to compare the current
situation in Egypt with the one that led to the disastrous fall of the shah of
Iran in 1979."5
The Islamists were also very full of themselves.
Hadn't they just bested the Soviet superpower in Afghanistan? That victory
persuaded multitudes of Islamists that they could dispense with politics
altogether. Jihad would suffice; God would provide. (They forgot that in
Afghanistan, it was the CIA and Pakistani intelligence that provided.) The
fervor of imminent redemption percolated through their ranks. Power awaited them
just beyond the next attack on foreign tourists, the next massacre of pro-regime
villagers. In Western capitals, worried diplomats thought so too, and proposed
putting out lines to Islamist leaders sooner rather than later.
But the
regimes held tight, and the Islamists made a fatal mistake: in their impatience,
they escalated their violence in a rash lunge to overturn the status quo. They
could not seize the state, so they tried to wrest society away from it. They
could not kill rulers and generals, so they killed journalists and artists. They
could not legislate the veil, so they enforced it by terror. Each escalation
made the Islamists into enemies of the people, so that when the regimes finally
mobilized to smite them, no one stood with them in solidarity not even the pious
and poor. There was too much blood, and too much of it Muslim. From the
mid-1990s, writes Kepel, "the Islamist movement began to unravel, and the
violence hastened its decline."
And what of Osama bin Laden? After
September 11, Kepel (and Olivier Roy, author of an earlier book entitled The
Failure of Political Islam) came under a barrage of criticism in France. Had
they not lulled the West into complacency with their over-optimistic and
premature talk of "post-Islamism"? Kepel argues in this book that bin Laden's
brand of terrorism arose precisely from the failure of Islamism writ large:
Al-Qaeda, driven to the four corners of the globe, struck Manhattan because it
could not touch the Arab regimes it sought to destroy. Kepel has said of his
French critics that they either failed to read his book, or read too much into
it.
Some American interpreters of Islamism, by the way, have said the
same about their pre-September 11 writings. The difference is that Kepel's
defense is justified, and theirs is not. The French "post-Islamists" were never
starry-eyed about Islamist goals, and never dismissive of the Islamist potential
for terror. The American Islamophiles, on the other hand, gave the benefit of
the doubt to any and every Islamist, and scoffed at scenarios of mass
killing.
THE DEFEAT of Islamist movements inflicted by the rulers of
Algeria and Egypt has been duplicated on a smaller scale in Saudi Arabia,
Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, and Malaysia. Kepel covers them all. Naturally, he
dwells at greatest length on the cases that confirm his thesis. The problem is
that some cases don't.
There are Islamist movements, positioned at the
very jugular of the Middle East, that are not at all spent. In Lebanon,
the Iranian-backed Hizballah has dug itself into Lebanese politics and society,
and its militiamen still parade with guns, having compelled Israel to withdraw
from south Lebanon after an 18-year occupation. And from the
Palestinian-controlled cities of the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas and Islamic Jihad
dispatch waves of suicide bombers, and openly take credit for their deeds. These
movements still believe that a determined minority can change the course of
history the few thousand Shi'a guerrillas who hunted the Israeli army, and the
one hundred Palestinians who have chosen "self-martyrdom."
These
movements flourish not because they have forged a broad social coalition.
Hizballah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as much as they serve their own followings,
serve the interests of certain regimes. Syria has allotted space to Hizballah
because its objective of bleeding Israel coincides with the aims of Damascus.
Needless to say, there is no active Islamist movement in Syria itself the Ba'ath
regime would never allow it. But Hizballah's young leader, Seyyid Nasrallah, and
Syria's young president have become boon companions, as they chart a common
strategy. There is also room in Damascus for Ramadan Shallah, formerly of the
University of South Florida, currently the leader of Islamic Jihad. Likewise,
the Palestinian Authority has used Hamas and Islamic Jihad as levers against
Israel. It was Arafat himself who extricated the paraplegic Sheikh Ahmad Yasin
from an Israeli prison, restoring him as leader of Hamas. And Islamist terrorism
has become the essence of the so-called Al-Aqsa intifada, which Yasir
Arafat is unwilling to end until he can emerge from the fire with a convincing
V-sign raised on high.
The point is that these Islamist movements thrive
because they are not "in oppositon." They are proxies of regimes in a
common struggle against Israel. Decline or not, there will always be space for
movements that are prepared to delay confrontation and serve rulers. Such
alliances offer Islamists an opening for turning national causes into full-blown
holy wars. Kepel devotes a chapter to the failure of the Islamist international
to turn Bosnia into an Islamist cause. But Islamists have had undeniable success
in recasting the struggles for Palestine and Kashmir into jihads. This
may not bring them to power anytime soon, but it is a safe port in a storm, and
it aids prudent preparation for another bid for power in the future. In the
meantime, states are more than willing to exploit the Islamist sword, especially
where they hesitate to wield their own. The regular forces can lounge in their
barracks while the zealots do the work.
Kepel is unconvinced. "The
Islamist movement will have much difficulty reversing its trail of decline as it
confronts twenty-first century civilization," he writes. "Muslims no longer view
Islamism as the source of utopia, and this more pragmatic vision augurs well for
the future." And here is an influential echo: Robert Kaplan, who has made his
name by anticipating the worst, now predicts that "the new century will
ultimately see the implosion of political Islam." Implosion, of course, is much
more dramatic than decline, and would almost certainly require that Iran discard
its revolution something Kaplan believes is quite likely.6 This is
Kepel's argument drawn to its furthest conclusion, and it takes some boldness to
make it.
But there is another view, spelled out in "Global Trends 2015,"
a report published in 2000 by the National Intelligence Council, representing
the considered opinion of the CIA and "non-government" experts (including Joseph
Nye and, at the time, Richard Haass). The report, after surveying the Middle
East's grim combination of growing populations and economic failure, concludes
that, by 2015, "populations will be significantly larger, poorer, more urban,
and more disillusioned." As a result, Islamism will remain very much in play:
Popular resentment of globalization as a Western intrusion
will be widespread. Political Islam in various forms will be an attractive
alternative for millions of Muslims throughout the region, and some radical
variants will continue to be divisive social and political
forces.7
The report goes on to predict this: "Islamists
could come to power in states that are beginning to become pluralist and in
which entrenched secular elites have lost their appeal."8
If you
had to bet the family farm or the country's tallest skyscraper on one of these
predictions, which would you choose? Is Islamism like a harmless soap bubble,
destined to pop in a shimmer of disappearing incandescence? Or is it the kind of
bubble that will explode like a gas pocket suddenly exposed to a flame? Kepel's
prediction is predicated on a fundamentally optimistic assessment: Muslims,
having exhausted all other alternatives, will do the right thing. "As Muslim
societies emerge from the Islamist era," he writes, "it is through openness to
the world and to democracy that they will construct their future. There is no
longer any real alternative." But can we be sure that "democracy" will not bring
the Islamist movement back from the shadows? Do we know that, in the absence of
a strong state, the prospects for democracy outweigh those of a Balkan-style
breakdown? Are you out of government? If you answer yes to these three
questions, then place your bet with Kepel.
PRESUMABLY AT some moment
before 2015, Osama bin Laden will resurface, dead or alive. In the meantime,
books about him are easier to find. The entry by Roland Jacquard, president of
the Paris-based International Observatory on Terrorism, it is an updated version
of a book originally published in French, during the very week of September 11.
Like previous books on bin Laden, this one belongs to the gray genre of
the intelligence compendium. In a study of this kind, every bit of information
is thrown into a mixer: original documents, press reports, intelligence leaks.
Such books can almost write themselves, although readers are advised not to
delve too deeply in the footnotes; this is a kitchen that will spoil your
appetite.
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That said, Jacquard writes a smooth narrative, navigating the
familiar chapters in bin Laden's biography the family business, the jihad
years in Afghanistan, the creation of al-Qaeda. To the extent anyone can tell
from unclassified sources, his account is broadly accurate. But shame on the
publisher for padding this book with one hundred pages of poorly reproduced
"original" documents in Arabic (and French), whose English "translations" on
opposing pages are hopelessly inadequate, even as summations. Better versions
could have been plucked from the Internet. This is all the more inexplicable as
the "consulting editor" listed on the title page is an Egyptian-born instructor
of Arabic at Duke. (Her afterword, telling us that Islam is not bin Laden and
bin Laden is not Islam, is a miniature sample of the pap offered by countless
academics. Moreover, it contradicts Jacquard's own argument that bin Laden's
"brotherhood" is everywhere, that that he has "countless" followers, and that
Al-Qaeda will outlast him.)
Jacquard is no academic. But let the truth be
told: the terrorism experts, whom the professors hold in such low esteem, who
mangle Arabic documents and assign equal weight to rumor and fact, actually have
a better track record than any combination of academic Arabists. If anyone can
be said to have imagined an event on the scale of September 11, it was the
terrorism experts Jacquard included. The reason is that they took Islamists at
their word. And so it behooves readers to heed Jacquard's (ominously numbered)
Chapter 13: "Jihad's New Weapons." Islamism may have crested; it may even be
headed toward "implosion." But the fervent remnant, however small, will soldier
on with one purpose: to outdo the murderous performance of September 11. Don't
be deceived by the ease of the Afghan victory, warns Jacquard: "This brand of
terrorism still has networks around the world, mysterious financial power, and
no doubt new leaders lurking in the shadows. The threat remains intact." Extreme
Islamists are already obsessed with the chemical, the biological, and the
nuclear. Henceforth, the United States will be left with no choice but to wage
continuous war against every last redoubt of extreme Islamism.
Clash of
civilizations? That would take two, and it would not be an even contest. But
there can be no doubt that the United States will have its hands full in lopping
off the heads of Al-Qaeda as they grow back, and that the playing field is more
level than most Americans imagine. "We no longer believe in the great powers,"
bin Laden told Jacquard in answer to a question he submitted a year ago. "Our
conviction is that America is much weaker than Russia." For the Islamists, it is
the United States that is in decline (along with Israel), and if Muslims by the
thousands are willing to do battle as "self-martyrs," with the "right" weapons,
victory will be theirs. One can only hope that September 11 is what Kepel makes
it out to be: the end of an era. But one is left with the uneasy feeling that
Jacquard may be right; that we are only at the beginning.
© Martin Kramer
Notes
1Hume Horan, quoted by Eric Boehlert, "A Failure to Communicate,"
Salon.com, Nov. 7, 2001.
2Christopher Ross, "Political Islam: Myths,
Realities, and Policy Implications," speech delivered to the Salzburg Conference
of NEA Public Affairs Officers, Sept. 21, 1993.
3Colin L. Powell, "A
Long, Hard Campaign," Newsweek, Oct. 15, 2001.
4Robin Wright,
"Islam, Democracy and the West," Foreign Affairs 71, no. 3 (Summer 1992):
136.
5Stanley Reed, "The Battle for Egypt," Foreign Affairs 72, no.
4 (Sept.-Oct. 1993): 95.
6Robert D. Kaplan, "The World in 2005,"
The Atlantic Monthly, Mar. 2002.
7National Intelligence Council,
Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment
Experts, NIC2000-02, Dec. 2000, p. 70.
8Ibid., p.
71.
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Martin Kramer, "Islamist Bubbles," The National Interest, Summer 2002, pp. 132-38.
The article is a review of Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, translated by Anthony F. Roberts, published by Belknap Press/Harvard University Press; and Roland Jacquard, In the Name of Osama bin Laden: Global Terrorism and the Bin Laden Brotherhood, translated by George Holoch, published by Duke University Press.
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