Nicholas M. Guariglia - 7/15/2006
It was late 2001. Northern Alliance soldiers, aided by U.S. commandos, had ended the brutal reign of Mullah Omar. With the Taliban fleeing to the sky-high and mountainous Tora Bora terrain, the al Qaidists had been run out of their camps and bases, and the Afghan locals had reclaimed their towns. Men began listening to the radio and, if they felt so inclined, shaved their beards; women began enrolling in schools and showing their faces all once outlawed under the theocratic rule of the now-overthrown regime. A return to some semblance of normalcy was i n the air, and a yearning for respectable statehood and independence was prevalent.
Overhead, bombs largely became food packages, as the United Nations Children Fund concluded that the American intervention in Afghanistan had led to conditions as to where 35,000 additional Afghan babies a year would now survive childbirth, 10,000 additional Afghan women a year would now survive labor due to adequate prenatal care, and an additional 115,000 Afghan children a year would now make it passed the age of five due to receiving vaccinations they otherwise would not have. Yet it was around this time that Ibrahim Nafie, the leading editor of the Egyptian state-run Al Ahram newspaper, maliciously told his reading audience that the U.S. purposely dropped humanitarian products on areas with landmines to kill hungry Afghans, and genetically treated the food to poison the Afghan population.
In the present day Arab world, such cynical indoctrination is the norm, not the exception. Blatant antagonists in Tehran and Damascus boldly and directly sponsor and host our adversaries, while more blasé thugocracies, such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia, capture a few crackpot fundamentalists here and there to highlight their support, all the while indoctrinating their populace into believing warped lies. It goes without saying that this game serves a double function a continued faux friendship with the U.S. to keep us at bay, and the production of an external enemy Americans and Jews to maintain internal vulnerability.
How and why is this so customary? By walking on both sides of the fence, these peculiar autocracies claim to be our brothers in arms, and yet simultaneously generate the next generation of our killers, through state-run media and television (like a 30-part Syrian miniseries that suggested Jews drink the blood of children), nonchalance of hateful and racist rhetoric from punk imams and clerics, and inciting school curriculum (which concentrates not on mathematics, but on martyrdom). For a moment consider that most members of al Qaida are natives of nations with friendly governments Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen. Add this to the fact that most hostile Middle Eastern states Iran, Syria, Iraq under Hussein, Afghanistan under Omar generally have more receptive populations (at least we dont condone their dictatorial governments, the thinking may go).
What are we to make of this? The ruling families of moderate and allied Arab states may wine and dine with members of Congress, play golf with department secretaries and cabinet officials, and laugh at Seinfeld reruns with members of their Gestapo in their palace getaways, but in their madrassas and schools they point their finger to us, the Great Satan, for their peoples illiteracy, unemployment, and shame creating a fertile ground where the literature and radical interpretation of Islam looks like an attractive alternative when in actuality, the true nature of their populations distress is their enslavement.
Lets review some of the more asinine fantasies: an Israeli pledge to aid tsunami victims somehow became a theory, held by the hypnotized Arab masses, that Israels relief offerings were really designed to (get this) militarily occupy Indonesia or more comical the deadly wave was purposely caused by a super-secret Israeli submarine, lurking under the depths of the sea, with the intent on killing as many Southeast Asian Muslims as possible.
And we are all aware of the silly Islamic accusation that the World Trade Center was attacked not by nineteen fanatical jihadists, but by Israeli intelligence operatives on the orders of Sharon, bogyman Zionists, corporate lobbyists, economic globalists, and a small Jewish cabal inside the Pentagon to turn American might and fury against innocent Muslims worldwide. The humorous irony to these slanders is what they expose within the Middle Eastern mindset: apparently they believe only sophisticated intelligence agencies like the CIA or Mossad could mastermind and conduct such a large, well thought out operation
not half-witted Muslim degenerates. This highlights Thomas Friedmans thesis that uneducated and unemployed Islamic youths suffer not only from a poverty of riches, but a poverty of dignity. This, coupled with rampant Third Reich-like indoctrination, creates a deadly psychosis of inferiority, in which brainwashed teenagers in the Middle East turn their celibacy, illiteracy, inadequacy, insignificance, and misdirected anger against those who have nothing to do with their poor condition like, say, New Yorkers whose tax dollars were going to their cause in the first place.
Apology is not a helpful exercise in flipping this equation. Instead our objective must be to end this neurosis of fascism, homophobia, racism, and sexism that has unfortunately manifested itself into a widespread problem all throughout the Arab world. The problem is not genetic Muslims are not inherently violent, opposed to democracy, anti-Semitic, or brutal toward women. Just look at the Muslims in democratic India, which represent the largest Muslim minority in the world. Rather than hijacking airliners and slicing throats, they are fixing the worlds computer problems in Bangalore. O ne must wonder why over half of the worlds Muslims who live outside the Middle East in free societies do not fall to barbarism, as well. Rather than bombing embassies and barracks, they are CEOs, doctors, lawyers
or perhaps just peaceful family men and women who are more interested in their childs report card grades than in toppling skyscrapers.
The entire dictatorial system of the Middle East would collapse precisely our long-term goal if the masses knew the truth
or, in the least, were allowed to question what they were told. The people are hushed for their fear of the tyrant, whereas the tyrant deflects hatred and criticism on us, for his fear of his people. This mode of thinking spurred former CIA Director James Woolsey who famously concluded the U.S. was now engaged in World War IV, with the Third World War being the decades-long battle against Soviet communism to explain to a small college audience that, We are on the side of those whom you (Saudi Arabia and Egypt) most fear
were on the side of your own people. His premise? Iraq is the blood-spattered proje ct, Egypt is the strategic pivot, the Saudi kingdom, the prize.
Such convictions have often been caricatured in recent years. From the Left, men like Woolsey are reckless warmongers, whereas from the Old Right, they are naïve and overly idealistic interventionists. Europeans shame such positions as cow-towing to the Israeli lobby, whereas the Arab media considers these positions to be the beginning of a new American imperialism. But for a moment consider the nonviolent mechanisms used to reach Mr. Woolseys objective after all, he doesnt advocate military action against Egypt or the House of Saud.
The policy is called linkage, and has been endorsed by human rights activists, most notably Soviet prisoner and now Israeli politician Natan Sharansky. It could be described best as a kind of detail diplomacy, where U.S. diplomats highlight specific abuses that occur within adversarial regimes, treating the littlest of nuances as the end all-be all within diplomatic dialogue.
The objective? To link our relationship to foreign countries based upon how they treat their citizenry. Ignoring the grievances of the oppressed, after all, could be considered our sole (or at least, our largest) past mistake. We relied on classic Cold War realpolitik Keep the black gold flowin and the Russians out which may have helped us, strategically, to bankrupt the Soviet Union. But the price to be paid was costly. By disregarding religious indoctrination and political oppression, and by not really raising the issue of human rights abuses within Arab societies, it created a power vacuum where the supposed promises of Islamic fundamentalism seemed to be a viable option.
Which brings us to this new approach, and we can look back to recent history for a colloquium. It is often said Ronald Reagans finest moment was at Reykjavik, where Mikhail Gorbachev was willing to make huge concessions regarding strategic nuclear arms reductions agreeing with almost everything Reagan and his diplomatic team put on the table. Gorbachev and his Soviet squad had one demand: for the U.S. to abandon plans for the Strategic Defensive Initiative (SDI), the so-called Star Wars concept of a space-deployed anti-ICBM nuclear shield, which would conceivably one day give the United States immunity from a Soviet nuclear attack. Gorbachev has since admitted his cabinet was terrified of this particular American initiative, knowing his government would be unable to spend as much as Washington for such a weapon-system. Reagan knew this then and abruptly stood up, said no deal, and walked out of the meeting rendering all possible agreements regarding other issues as moot.
At the time, it was political suicide for the embattled Reagan. What politician, after all, would want to go down in history as the leader who declined the Soviet Unions greatest concession? Rather than end the meeting with a photo-op of handshakes between the two heads-of-state which could have sent his poll numbers soaring Reagan instead insisted defense spending and the SDI program would continue unabated, hoping an arms race with the Soviets would eventually bankrupt their inferior communist system. The media, at the time, castigated the decision as reckless, dangerous, and foolish.
Knowing now in retrospect how this scenario unfolded, what we need is a new core of hardliners, with Reykjavik-like moments of diplomatic brinkmanship. Instead this time, the issues we must expose center around human rights abuses, curbing religious intolerance, and highlighting political indoctrination within the nation-state we are negotiating with. If we are to receive considerable Egyptian concessions vis-à-vis Israel, we are to insist Hosni Mubarak release democratic dissident Ayman Nour from his dungeon. If we are to receive significant Syrian compromises vis-à-vis Lebanon, we are to demand democracy advocate Mohammad Ghanem be freed. If we are to get the Saudis to lower the pric e of oil, were to also demand they take the widely translated and distributed Mein Kampf out of circulation.
If our counterparts agree to our demands, then we are to boldly come out and let it be known that our request was honored, which will in turn tell the dissidents of the region that we are as serious about reform as we say we are. If released political prisoners want to know who was responsible for their discharge, they would know to look to the West. This would tell the people of the region that Americans do in fact believe our idealism and interests are at least intertwined. What other oil-importing country demands womens rights at a time of high gas prices, rising economies in China and India, and petroleum shortages?
Such a policy of linkage would do wonders for the United States even if those we were negotiating with absolutely refused to abide by our demands
but only if we were to openly and unapologetically make their refusal to reform an issue on the international stage. Imagine for a moment Arab media channels covering a Condoleezza Rice press conference, in which she proclaims, Our energy deal with Saudi Arabia, to lower gas prices, will be postponed until the royal family allows its women to drive.
Contrary to popular belief, we do in fact have Lech Wałęsa-type allies in the Middle East that call for plural liberality and democratic freedom. They all tend to be suffering in the dungeons and chambers of their fascist slave masters, and under the twisted apparatus of dictatorship. Our job is to find them Amr Khaled, Omar Karsou, Ayman Nour, Hashem Aghajari, Massoud Hamid, Ali Abdallah expose their oppression, align our interests with theirs, and empower them. Anything less is reverting back to the old status quo of turning a blind eye and de f acto tolerating fascism, which has only led the Middle East to its current disgusting state.
Nicholas M. Guariglia writes on the issues of national defense and counterterrorism, specifically regarding Middle East geopolitics. He is a student at the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he is studying American foreign policy. He can be contacted at nickguar@comcast.net |
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[Al Ahram] The national dialogue between Egypt President Mohamed Morsi with public figures got underway Saturday with both side attempting to reach an agreement amid amplifying disputes over the draft constitution and Morsi's recent constitutional declaration, announced presidential spokesperson Yasser Ali.
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