Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (No Series) (26 page)

Dealing with a World Aflame

The world, six years after 9/11, is increasingly awash with Muslims angry and hateful about the impact of U.S. and Western policies and actions on the Islamic world, and the U.S. government and its allies seem oblivious to the enemies they are making. Preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington and the NATO states only sporadically focus on the growth of Islamic militancy in other areas of the world, and when they do, they tend to look at each as an isolated problem; for example, “the Somalia problem” or the “Thai insurgency problem.” Underappreciated is the reality that there is a rising tide of anger against Western actions across the Islamic world, and that thanks to those actions—and to bin Laden’s leadership, al-Qaeda’s military attacks, Arabic satellite television, and the omnipresent Internet—the Muslim world is increasingly beginning to think of itself as not a collection of individual nation-states but as a unity—the ummah or community of believers demanded by Allah, launched by the Prophet Muhammad, defended by Saladin, and championed by bin Laden and other Islamist leaders. This rising sense of community is nowhere near to producing the homogenous Islamofascist caliphate so dear to the hearts of scare-mongering neoconservatives, Israeli politicians, and the media shills of each, but a worldwide Muslim anger is taking shape in different ways in different parts of the world. Some of this anger is dangerous, even potentially fatal to the United States, but much of it is not; some of it can be neutralized or defeated by America, but most of it cannot. That which cannot be blunted by America, however, either will fall or can be shifted to fall on others and need not be a national-security concern for us. One case, Europe, will be of deep and abiding concern to Americans, but it may be the one area of the world where we can do the least to help against Islamist forces.

For the foreseeable future, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan will be the three major producers of Islamist fighters to be confronted by the United States, its allies, and the incumbent governments of the Muslim world. Afghanistan was in that category before 9/11, but Pakistan and Iraq are there only because of U.S. actions after 9/11. The relevant actions here were not the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but rather that we failed to win and get out of either place and instead stayed on until we were defeated. Afghanistan will return to Taliban-like rule, and Iraq will be ruled by Islamist Shias or Sunnis, and both will remain unstable. Pakistan’s ability to avoid Islamist rule weakens with each passing month and now largely depends on how much longer the U.S.-led coalition occupies Afghanistan, which in turn depends only on how long it takes U.S. forces to find and kill bin Laden and his lieutenants. Minus the U.S. and its allies, Musharraf would be able to fully support the Taliban and its allies, destroy Karzai’s government, and reestablish Pashtun rule in Afghanistan. This process would yield a Pakistan-friendly, insular Islamist government in Kabul, the chance of gradually quieting the fierce anti-Islamabad discontent in the Pashtun tribal areas, and the recreation of a balance of power between Pakistan and India. Thus the possibility of avoiding an Islamistrun, nuclear-armed Pakistan remains, but it is a wasting chance and one that almost entirely depends on Musharraf being able to hold the Pakistani polity together under the Bhutto-caused imposition of emergency rule and the United States doing what it should have done before the year 2002 was out—kill bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and as many of their followers as possible and then leave immediately.
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Common sense and quick action may limit the damage done by U.S. policies and actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but it is hard to see the end of the damage flowing out of Iraq. Whether Shias or Sunnis emerge on top, Iraq will remain unstable, unreconstructed economically, and a cauldron in which neighboring countries will intervene clandestinely to protect and pursue their national and sectarian interests. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing for the United States—Muslims killing Muslims instead of Americans is a goal to be aggressively sought—but we will have to put up with some losses. Saudi Arabia and the other Arabian Peninsula states probably will remain stable by promoting, funding, and facilitating civil war in Iraq and posing as the protectors of Sunnis there and everywhere. These actions will add another strong element contributing to the containment of Iran, as they will force Tehran to bleed itself in blood and treasure to support Iraqi Shias even as the clock ticks out the final decade of its reliable oil reserves and its return to Third World impoverishment.
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For Jordan and Syria, however, the jig is up. Jordanians do not strongly support King Abdullah II’s Hashemite monarchy, which has earned a substantial dollop of additional hatred by supporting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and recently cracking down yet again on domestic Islamist political parties. The long-suppressed Jordanian Islamist community is large and restive—witness its support and admiration for the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—and an unstable Iraq will serve as the base from which al-Qaeda and other groups will infiltrate and stage attacks in Jordan. It is difficult to see Jordan surviving in its present form or with its present level of stability after the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq ends, without a drastic change in the regime’s authoritarianism in which Washington acquiesces.
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In Syria, Bashir al-Assad has never had the iron grip on the country that his father did, and so the Islamist fervor created in Syria by the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Washington’s humiliation of the young al-Assad by forcing Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon has emboldened domestic Islamists. Because of the strength of Syria’s military and security services, the Islamists will not have an easy time carrying the day, but they will be accommodated. Thus, Syria can no longer be counted on as a bulwark against Islamist militancy. As noted earlier, the U.S. invasion of Iraq destroyed the bulwarks provided by Saddam and al-Assad.
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What does all of this mean for Lebanon and Israel? Who knows, but very often two and two does sum to four.
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Lebanon is already dealing with renewed civil strife, and what appears to be the growing al-Qaeda presence in the country’s north suggests that bin Laden’s organization is already projecting its forces and influences westward from Iraq. And needless to say, Israel’s long-term strategic outlook—thanks mainly to its “friends” among America’s neoconservatives—has seldom looked dimmer or grimmer.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan are all potential disasters, but only in Pakistan is there a chance for the United States to protect its interests and then only if it can wind up its Afghan calamity both with rapidity and with the corpses of bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. The other four states are likely to become involved in an intracivilization conflict in the Muslim world. That conflict need not involve the United States in warfare, so long as oil supplies are not disrupted and Washington is wise enough to avoid allowing the Israelis to ensnare us into fighting their fight. That, alas, is a very long shot.

The United States will have many other countries of concern as the tide of Islamic anger rises, but few will either require or allow direct military intervention. I will look briefly at what I believe are the six most worrisome sites for America: the North Caucasus, because of the adjacent Caspian Sea oil reserves and the base it provides Islamists for proselytizing and nuclear procurement in Russia; Bangladesh, because it has the potential to be the East Asian hub for jihadism and a threat to India’s stability; Nigeria, where Christian-vs.-Muslim violence is rife and the U.S. economy’s interests are hostage to an increasingly unstable situation in the country’s oil fields; Thailand, because of U.S. military commitments to the Thai regime; and Somalia, where the United States has no genuine national-security interests but where Washington’s involvement might help trigger the spread of jihad across much of sub-Saharan Africa. The sixth site is Europe, which is many ways the most important to the United States and, at the same time, the place where we can—and should—do the least to help.

The North Caucasus:
Russia’s military has fought two wars in Chechnya since 1994, losing more than 6,600 soldiers. Moscow lost the first, but in the second it has slowed the pace of fighting there; although the Chechen rebel leader, Dokku Dumarov, recently declared the North Caucasus an “Islamic emirate” and declared war on Britain, Israel, and the United States. At this writing, the Russians maintain close to 100,000 military, security, and police personnel in Chechnya.
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As the Russians made some progress in Chechnya, however, the Islamists’ ideology and fighters have spread and are taking root in several other of the former Soviet republics in the North Caucasus, including Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, and Ingushetia.
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Particularly worrying for Moscow is the increasing Islamist presence in Dagestan; it is historically an “ancient Muslim region,” is the largest and most populous North Caucasus republic, and controls a large part of the Caspian Sea coast, giving Moscow access to the world’s largest untapped oil reserves in the Caspian Basin. In Ingushetia, too, Moscow is faced with a Muslim population that has long supplied Islamist fighters to the Chechen insurgents and in recent years has developed what C. J. Chivers of
The New York Times
has called “a potent anti-Moscow insurgency of its own.” Indeed, Moscow sent two thousand Interior Ministry troops there in July 2007, but the fighting continues and is “threatening to ignite a full-fledged guerilla war there.”
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The overall security situation in the Caucasus is deteriorating.
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This reality and the region’s historically porous borders allow the entry of Arab mujahedin into the region; Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, for example, has long been a hub for Arab fighters, and Moscow puts heavy culpability on Saudi Arabia and other Arabian Peninsula states for funding Islamist insurgent organizations, allowing their nationals to fight alongside the Chechens and others in the region, and sending Islamist NGOs to the North Caucasus to inculcate Wahhabism among the inhabitants. The smuggling-friendly borders also facilitate the ability of Islamist missionaries to enmesh themselves among Russia’s current Muslim population of between twenty and twenty-five million, which could grow to a minimum of 20 percent of Russia’s population by 2020,
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and for al-Qaeda and other Islamists to attempt to purchase or steal nuclear components or devices from the Former Soviet Union’s (FSU) still-unsecured nuclear-weapons arsenal. In the summer of 2006, for example, Georgian authorities arrested a Russian national who was in the country to sell what the Georgians described as 100 grams of bomb-grade uranium (U-235) “to a Muslim man from ‘a serious organization’” for one million dollars. That arrest followed a similar apprehension in 2003. In both cases, the quantities of uranium seized were too small to make a bomb but had been enriched to nearly the 90 percent level, which is ideal for bomb-making.
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For the United States, growing domestic insecurity and Islamist militancy in the North Caucasus poses several significant problems. First, the continuing failure of Washington and Moscow to fully secure the FSU’s nuclear arsenal encourages al-Qaeda and other Islamist organizations to keep trying to purchase or steal components for a weapon or a complete device. With porous borders, smuggling abounding, and rife corruption, the North Caucasus is an ideal base from which to reach into Russia for acquisition purposes. This instability also has the potential of disrupting the development of energy resources in the Caspian Basin, at a time when U.S. energy requirements continue to grow. Finally, the flow of Islamist missionaries into Russia—one expert estimates that in 2007 there were more than one thousand—promises to quicken the radicalization of the country’s already large Muslim population and accelerate the pace at which Russians are converting to Islam. Together these factors will increase the political power of Russian Muslims at a time when the country’s population is rapidly declining—148 million in 1982 to an expected 130 million in 2015. Russia’s Muslim population, moreover, far outpaces the population-maintaining fertility rate of 2.1 live births per woman, while the overall Russian population’s fertility rate is 1.14.
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As in European countries, the United States will one day have to deal with a Russia whose diplomatic positions and national interests are defined in increasing measure by the demands of its Muslim peoples.

Bangladesh:
A country known in the West largely for its poverty and its recurrent, massive natural disasters, Bangladesh is the world’s third most populous Muslim country, with a population of 152 million, 88 percent of which is Muslim.
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After gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971, the first Bangladesh government declared the country a secular state, and Islam there remained “more relaxed” than in the Arab world and “overwhelmingly moderate” for most of the rest of the century. Even today, for example, the leaders of the two major political parties are women.
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In 2001, however, Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia tempered secularism by inserting in the constitution that Bangladesh would be ruled according to “the sovereignty of Allah.”
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This switch occurred after Zia had formed an electoral alliance between her Bangladesh National Party and two Saudi-backed Islamist political parties (Jamaat-e Islami and Islamic Oika Jote) and defeated the rival Awami League. Like other such cooptation attempts in the Muslim world, Zia’s successful 2001 effort provided her coalition with the margin of victory but created a postelection environment in which Islamists have made significant organizational and political advances across the country. By mid-2005, for example, at least fifty-eight militant Islamic networks had been identified in Bangladesh.
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