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| Extremists vs moderates | | War on terrorism gets ideological dimension | |
by K. Subrahmanyam
THE US President had been talking about the war on terrorism for the last five years. That did not make sense. Terrorism was a strategy and not an entity against which war was to be waged. It was like saying that World War II was against Blitzkrieg and not against Nazism.
Finally after five years, in his speech on September 11, 2006, the US President has identified the enemy as people driven by a perverted vision of Islam - a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance and despises all dissent. The US has learnt that their goal is to build a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on the US and other civilised nations. He asserted, “The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation.”
A few days earlier on September 5, speaking to the Military Officers Association of America, President Bush specifically identified Sunni extremism and Shia extremism as enemies. He added, “If we retreat from Iraq, if we don’t uphold our duty to support those who are desirous to live in liberty, 50 years from now history will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know why we did not act.” He asserted, “I am not going to allow this to happen — and no future American President can allow it either.”
President Bush’s speeches have been criticised in the US by Democratic Party leaders and others. Most of them have pointed out that it was wrong to have started the war in Iraq before ensuring that Al-Qaeda and Taliban were completely eliminated from Afghanistan. The result of that wrong strategy is the US has to fight wars in two theatres, both Iraq and Afghanistan.
President Bush’s popular rating has fallen and there are expectations that because of the unpopularity of the war, in the midterm elections in November the Republican Party of the President may lose its majority both in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Accepting that the invasion of Iraq was a major strategic blunder, the fact remains that the war against the extremists was not started by the US. It began because of the attack on 9/11 by the extremists. President Bush claims that captured Al-Qaeda documents reveal that Osama bin Laden and his associates are not willing to negotiate with the infidels. In these circumstances, the US President envisages a prolonged war against the extremists. Can his successor withdraw from the war as happened to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the US in Vietnam?
President Bush is clear that no future US President would withdraw from Iraq either. There is logic in this view. The Vietnamese were not threatening US security nor were the Afghans Soviet security though the jehadi Mujahideen were carrying out raids into the Soviet Central Asian republics. The retreat of the US and its allies and the victory of the extremists are likely to destabilise entire West Asia and its oil supply to the world and at the same time will not guarantee that the US and Western European countries will be spared of terrorist attacks.
Whatever may be the mistakes committed by the US and historical wrongs perpetrated, the issue today is: will the world be better off if the extremists gain a victory?
The world did not suffer because the Vietcong won the war in Vietnam. The world today, including the US, is paying a high price because the jehadis were able to compel the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. India has had experience in dealing with the Taliban. Osama bin Laden’s victory would mean Talibanisation of the Islamic nations of the West Asia. Is that in our interest?
Strangely enough, General Musharraf in his speech in Brussels has warned about the increasing danger of Talibanisation. There is increasing talk of the Pakistani Taliban, apart from the Afghan Taliban. In these circumstances no future US President, even a Democratic President, will be in a position to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, whatever the Democratic Party may say now for reasons of domestic politics.
The identification of the enemy by the US President as Islamic extremism has very significant implications. Till now it was called a war on terror without specifying an entity against whom the war was being waged. Now the entity has been identified and the war has acquired an ideological dimension. It is a struggle between Islamic extremism and moderate Islam backed by the rest of the world, as the US President sees it. He says, “The struggle has been called a clash of civilisations. In truth, it is a struggle for civilisation.” Even if one totally disagrees with the US policies and President George Bush, it is difficult to disagree with the proposition that war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban is a struggle for civilisation.
In 1939 when the Allied Powers declared war on Hitler some people pointed out to the imperial records of Britain and France and inequity of the treaty of Versailles, and called the war an imperialist war. It became a people’s war only when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. India is already experiencing terrorist attacks from the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a leading constituent of the International Islamic Front of Osama bin Laden and it is now believed that the mantle of Al-Qaeda has fallen on it. Therefore, it is quite clear that any victory of Bin Laden or the Taliban or other extremists is not going to be in the Indian interests.
The identification of Islamic extremists as the enemy entails that moderate mainstream Islam should assert itself, denounce the extremism and be supported by the rest of the international community. If there is a view that terrorism is espoused only by a limited number of individuals and has not yet become an ideology then the resurgence of the Taliban and the very widespread terrorist outrages all over the globe will need to be explained. Mr George Bush has now converted this war into an ideological war and a struggle for civilisation.
Therefore, in India the long-range implications of these developments and their impact on our national interest and security have to be analysed. In spite of all their ideological animosities, the capitalist West and the communist Soviet Union came together to fight Nazism as a common threat. On the same logic, India, a victim of terrorism of Islamic extremist groups, cannot isolate itself from the others who are fighting the same war however much we may otherwise disagree with them.
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