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It is their ‘good’ one that is the real ‘bad.’
An emotional Musharraf relinquished his post by handing over his ceremonial baton Wednesday to his successor, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who is widely expected to maintain the army’s pro-Western policies
“(You) are the saviors of Pakistan,” Musharraf said in a final speech to the troops, sniffing repeatedly and appearing to blink back tears. Hundreds of senior officers, politicians and other civilians watched from the stands as an unsmiling Musharraf – wearing a phalanx of medals and a green sash across his uniform – reviewed the ranks to the strains of “Auld Lang Syne.”
Liberals never fail to highlight and portray US policies as the reason for discord and discontent within civilizations. How far that is true requires some thought. Liberal press and leaders hate familiar targets of ridicule that includes three ‘hated’ but highly disciplined armies within the nation of Islam, which can be really considered as a bulwark against mass radicalization of the Middle East: the Turkish, the Pakistani, to some extent Egyptian and the Saudi National Guards; weaken these forces of stabilization and, from Turkey to Pakistan, a new kind of lawlessness shall emerge. Engagement of the west with these forces of stability is a must. In the name of freedom and democracy we cannot overlook continuity and discipline. It is these institutions that Al-Qaida-inspired revolution is aimed against; it is this leadership that Political Islam considers as their principal enemy against their eventual goal of global intifada. Remove these bastions of stability and see the materialization of anarchy a la Iraq. A strong nucleus is cardinal to continuity of stability within this crisis of crescent that extends from Morocco to Pakistan.
Islamic extremists, like their brethren across the board, have shown a peculiar inclination to support the strongman. Since the last few years, Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaida inspired ideologues have emerged as the new idols of Islam, although they may be better presented as the twin nemeses of the Islamic world through their portrayal of Islam as a religion that allows callous murders, compounded deceit and waging undeclared wars against civilians. It is ironically argued by the likes of Obama that the right course of action is not military force but negotiations. Islam revolves around the strongman; we are lucky to have few benign despots like Musharraf and Mubarak as an answer to a fundamentalist strongman like OBL. Insensitive dictators and radical ideologues who appeal to their cause and supremacy of Islam have mass appeal whereas benevolent despots who spread a more secular message of coexistence are targets of elimination. In the minds of many imbued with the spirit of political Islam, the former are the very heroes of Islam battling the latter, an oppressor who threatens to cast Islamic civilization to oblivion.
The liberals fail to appreciate that it is the secular armies of the region that have kept the nations’ course on a track to eliminate evils of radicalization as its core strategy; most of the freedom leaders have no clear idea as to the right priorities. Radicals like Hitler love the ballot boxes only as a tool to destroy all dissent.
The prevalent broad-spectrum anti-American logic in the Islamic world, like Pakistan and Afghanistan, is based on the theory that the US will thrust Muslim allied nations aside when their usefulness has come to an end and then move on. It is generally assumed that, for some perverse reason, the only country America has absolute and unwavering allegiance is Israel and it’s the country that has the least to offer.
This lack of consistency in strategy on the part of the US vis-à-vis the Islamic world has definite bearing on the actions of present anti-Americanism. America’s track record with regards to Muslim populations can be defined by the four crises it responded to during the ’80s and ’90s.
In Afghanistan, against the invading Red Army, a country infamous for her reputation, where “God only comes to weep.” The Gulf War liberated the Kuwaiti people from the yoke of Saddam, whilst American intervention in the Balkans saved Bosnian lives whilst ethnic Albanians were spared Serbian wrath in the neighboring Kosovo solely because of America’s intervention.
In every instance, the liberated were Muslim peoples! America undertook a disastrous military campaign in Somalia to save the starving population, Muslims all. In Mogadishu, a battle that killed 18 American servicemen, the attack was primarily intended to capture the warlord’s top lieutenants responsible for killing of 29 Muslim peacekeepers!
American administrations have had to prove that they were not anti-Muslim; indeed it was explicitly stated that the operations in Bosnia were to placate an increasingly hostile Muslim world. Indeed Serbians seeking to avenge the humiliation inflicted by the Ottoman Empire and reclaim Kosovo were bent on a genocidal drive to expunge the last Muslim from their lands.
To prevent this holocaust in Europe, America resorted to bombing an Orthodox Christian nation and thus ensured the survival of Islam in the Balkan region. Indeed, President Clinton continued to bomb Yugoslavia during the holy days of Eastern Orthodox Easter, nevertheless, halted the bombing of Iraq during Ramadan in a tribute to Islam. Christian Belgrade was razed to the ground for the preservation of 7 million Muslim lives yet there is no gratitude from Muslims for these altruistic gestures.
In a uni-polar global order, America has risen as the patron of oppressed Islamic populations and even now gears itself to the onerous task of liberating the Muslims of Iraq from their dictator. Muslim populations throughout the globe must acknowledge this fundamental truth. Pragmatism and geopolitical reality should be the order of the day, not vague ramblings against a superpower, whose remarkable partiality towards Muslim populations is routinely ignored.
The populace’s street enmity towards American action in Iraq/Afghanistan and now its fallout in North West Province of Pakistan stems as much from the feelings of betrayal as it does from the Pan-Islamic political Islamic sentiments that continue to linger on within the national consciousness.
There are some who perceive United States as calculating and untrustworthy, a mixture of innocence abroad and Machiavellian superpower. Indeed it was believed that America’s intervention in Afghanistan during the 80’s was to only avenge the debacle of Vietnam and with its success they abandoned critical pivots.
Nevertheless, America has redeemed itself by liberating the Afghan population from the Taliban. The liberation of the Afghan people from their tyrants, in this case Muslim theocrats, is yet another instance when Muslim peoples need foreign intervention to save them from themselves.
The Islamic world has progressed through the milestones of the last century recoiling from failure to failure. The inherent inability of Muslim nations to discern the true victor of global conflicts has led to immense setbacks.
In the First World War, the Ottoman Empire sided with Kaiser’s Germany leading to the dissolution of the Caliphate whilst Mufti Hussein, the spiritual leader of Palestinian people during the 40’s, actively abetted Hitler in his mission to exterminate European Jewry. Failing to come to grips with geopolitical reality, rather, retreating to the escapist fantasies of “Western, Jewish conspiracies” against Muslims, have defined the Islamic response to the events of the modern age.
Pan-Islamism under aggressive icons of political Islam is a variant of this recent phenomenon where the impulse to identify with Muslim leaders induces stultifying intellectual isolation and enmity towards the West. The Pan-Islamism strain afflicting Islamic world is reminiscent of the Khilafat Movement, when in the early 20th century, 18,000 sub-continental Muslims sold all their possessions and means of livelihood to depart British India for the Afghan frontier, only to be refused at the border by the Wali of Afghanistan.
Shattered by the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire by Ataturk, revered as father of the Turkish nation, sub-continental Muslims failed to reconcile themselves with the demise of the Turkish Caliphate. The drive amongst Muslims to embrace modernity in Turkey was largely absent in their coreligionists in the subcontinent who, instead, mourned the loss of the last Islamic Empire.
This impulse to demonstrate solidarity with the rest of the Islamic world was further manifested when thousands rallied on streets to support radicals. Bin Laden has emerged as the latest incarnation and savior of the Muslim world, although he is a demented warrior who may very well go down in history as the one cause for the loss of most Muslim lives. Leaders like Musharraf, King Abdullah and Talbani who resist the extremist version of political Islam are bad tyrants; those like ANejad and Nasrullah who promote radicalization and confrontation are considered good tyrants. Irony is that even their Shiite pedigree is overlooked by the zealots as far as they continue to challenge the present course of integration and promote head-on collisions. It is with Hamas, Hezbollah and Pasdaran that the liberals promote dialogue, benevolent dictators like Musharraf are shunned, and even transfer of peaceful power and command is not considered good enough.
Indeed to idealize OBLs of the world as an Islamic icon is folly when their actions share more with Stalin or Hitler than Saladin. The other great warrior Saddam had ideological roots in a secular Arab nationalistic movement co-founded by a Syrian Christian, Michael Aflaq. The Ba’th party had no solidarity with Islamic nations, rather, it solely propounds the unity of the Arab World. But this secular tyrant was hailed as the voice of freedom once he took on the great Satan. An intelligent despot favouring coexistence and avoiding clash is a bad leader, whereas any leader that takes on certain destruction is favoured; it is not important how much rage he brings upon the nation. His crimes were all forgiven; it is not the freedom people aspire to, it is the challenge to the status-quo. Political Islam wants to re-establish control, respect and global acceptability like the Ottomans or Moguls. That is not likely. Hordes stepping from steppes of Farghana and conquering north of India was possible in bygone days; today it is all about minds and knowledge. On that count, political Islam has lost the war of ideas; this ‘lost war’ has resulted in internal aggression, their inability to express their aggression seemingly is now translating into internal self-annihilation; suicide bombing is the last ditch attempt to establish a rule of terror of the minority. Radical control of governance in sensitive states like Pakistan and Saudi is the aim and purpose of the radical Islam. The policy of US-led containment has made them turn their guns towards their own; they are devouring their own at Godspeed.
The track record of rejectionists is unparalleled when it comes to the decimation of Muslim populations. Suicide bombing by OBL-led deviants is manifestation of self-hatred and exemplary spiritual stalwartship. In Halabja, five thousand Sunni Kurds were gassed because of their irredentist tendencies, whilst in his Anfal campaign, 50,000 were estimated to have lost their lives. Saddam was wholly responsible for the bloody cleavage in the Islamic world, indeed his vicious attack on Iran polarized Islam’s Shia and Sunni sects. In what way could the mass annihilation of the children of Ahvaz, where Saddam launched his Scud missiles, or the destruction of the Shiraz Hospital for Children with an estimated loss of life to over 600, advance Islam? The disconcerting quietness of the Muslims worldwide is shocking when ideological dictators of political Islam spill Muslim blood. A bloodthirsty tyrant can be a popular leader once he puts the nation on a confrontationist course of destruction with the west. A leader is hated if he promotes peace and loved if Jihad is the terminology of development. Musharraf of the unintelligent Kargil episode was the darling of the Pakistani fundamentalist, and once converted to reason has become the target of disdain and ridicule.
Muslims must now rise from their conspiracy-induced stupor and realize that the blood-soaked leadership of political Islam is not the true champion of Islam. Megalomaniac delusions of some demonstrators with their hot-wire urges for revenge against the western civilization completely overlook the ground realities on which Islamic economies and welfare of its plus 1 billion is attached to the global systems.
The Islamic world’s inability to exist in isolation is completely beyond their grasp. It can be argued that all US actions in the last couple of decades were motivated by vested American interests and that they have been directly or indirectly instrumental in helping many tyrannical governments. But isn’t protecting national interests what politics is all about? Political pragmatism for us should be at the forefront. Even oil-rich Arab states know that any attempt to use oil to influence the United States would strain their own economies to a breaking point. The politics of oil as a weapon has been discarded. They cannot fight militarily and in the absence of any realistic economic leverage, the best they can do is to reconcile their long-term interests with those of the United States.
Radical Islam promotes any weapon of mass destruction or economic disruption, from enrichment of uranium to destroying the $ as a currency of global trade to using Oil as a weapon. It is the sensible despots and the benevolent ones who try to promote coexistence and it is those who need support against the onslaught of radical agenda. The liberals have all guns blazing against these benevolent ones, the radical ones are invited to university talk shows! If oil-rich nations can overlook many injustices of the present system for the sake of their country, why can’t Muslims, for the sake of their own good, perceive the removal of icons of political Islam from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq as a long overdue service to populace at large?
It is sad to see that in the nation of political Islam and liberals…
A good dictator is someone who runs the country and economy to the ground.
A bad dictator is someone who tries to encourage sensibilities and promote coexistence with rationality.
iqbal.latif@gmail.com