In a bid to challenge the view propagated by Washington neoconservatives that the West is engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Islamists, a new Western organization the Conflicts Forum, has been created by international think tanks.
Ever since the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, right-wing officials and lobbyists in the US, several of them close to Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party in Israel, have sought to demonize Islam and portray it as a deadly threat to Western societies.
These views were embraced at the highest level in the US, and to some extent in Britain as well, where the notion took hold that, for the West to be secure, militant Muslim groups had to be destroyed and Muslim societies had to be reformed, if necessary by force.
The decision to wage war in Iraq, followed a global manhunt in pursuit of anyone suspected of sympathy for Islamists. The same attitude inspires the current US campaign of seeking to impose democracy on the Muslim world in order to “defeat terror.”
According to Western decision makers, terrorists are like a cancer, the argument goes: You don’t overanalyze your disease, you just kill it. This “terrorist” label is key to the mindset that projects the mistaken view that “they hate our values”.
The threat, Americans are told, is existential - “they want to destroy us”. Therefore, US Administration’s only response can be to destroy them. Anyone who disagrees is either naive, an enemy, or guilty of legitimizing the use of violence.
This is wrong because majority of Islamists and Muslims support elections, good governance, freedom and democratic values (closely akin to Islamic teachings).
The conflict between the US and a worldwide struggle by Islamists against US polices, has become the most explosive issue in the world today.
The Muslim world has become the epicenter of the world crisis. Almost every day brings news of a violent clash somewhere. The concept that Westerners are engaged in “a war on terrorism” is so deep-rooted in their thinking pattern that most of them accept the phrase without raising any question. So people in America and Britain are taken aback when it is suggested that they are not facing “terrorism” in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Kashmir but a social and political struggle against the global injustices committed by US polices - an irregular insurgency.
Acts that are rightly labeled as “terrorism” do occur (and one certainly need to protect oneself from them), but what the West is facing is a growing socio-political struggle marked by economic deprivation.
Insistence on the terrorism label carries a high price. It has prompted the West to make the wrong assessment of what challenges are being confronted in Muslim societies, and led the Americans to deploy the wrong means to combat it.
One piece of evidence often cited by “terrorism experts” for the war on terror is the existence of “terrorist training camps” (Madrasas) in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But these were not terrorist training facilities at all.
They produced freedom fighters, in the tens of thousands, trained in irregular warfare techniques, in madrasas that allowed men with different linguistic backgrounds to engage as a single fighting unit.
They were trained to fight an insurgency against Western forces and against pro-Western regimes in the region. The Americans call these fighters ‘terrorists’, but this is not the way they see themselves.
Bombings and use of superior force never bring uprisings and insurgencies to an end. Traditional military thinking categorizes these actions as “wearing down the enemy”.
Generally, it has the negative impacts on the people. For example, Israeli military justified an incursion into Jenin in the West Bank on the grounds that there had been 10 “terrorists” in the city and after the military action there were only four. The threat was reduced. Six had been killed. But to others, and to Jenin’s inhabitants, there was a different perception. There had been 10 resistance fighters, the Israeli military had killed six - and now there were 24. The question is: Was the use of superior military force a tool for subtraction or multiplication?
President Pervez Musharraf has a vision similar to the one propagated by the international institution, the Conflicts Forum. The “war on terror” would only be won if the Islamic world rejects extremism and if the West turns its attention to the core issues that cause terrorism. According to him, the Muslims expect from the West (the European Union and the United States) to resolve all political disputes involving Muslims and also assist them in social and economic development. The president said, “Because if we don’t do that (address the core issues), we may be winning the battle against terrorism but maybe we won’t succeed in winning the war against terrorism, which (is caused by) the core issues of political disputes, poverty and illiteracy”. A sense of deprivation arising out of political disputes, and that sense of deprivation, then taking to extremism and militancy, because people are poor, and illiterate, and they get indoctrinated.
The United States is ignoring those root causes in its campaign against terrorism and could lose the war in the long term. So addressing political disputes will help reduce the terror threat. First of all, Palestine problem should be resolved, because that has antagonized Muslims all over the world against the West. There is a unanimous sympathy for the Palestinians and the United States is seen or perceived as an Israeli supporter and totally against Muslims. US President George Bush declares, “We will not wait for terrorists to attack the US. Rather, we will attack terrorists in anticipation. The US will not hesitate to attack countries that support terrorism”.
Pakistan, being the front-line state in the US-led war on terror, is committed to weeding out terrorism from its soil and has adopted both short and long-term strategies to counter the menace.
The immediate action needed was military operation and that had already been accomplished. Resultantly, Pakistan has Al-Qaeda on the run within its borders and the list of high-value targets in the Al-Qaeda leadership is shortening.
Pakistan security forces have apprehended more than 600 Al-Qaeda suspects. Pakistan has broken the back of the network. Nevertheless, Pakistan considers that global injustice is the root cause of terrorism and solution to this problem can be sought in mutual understanding, political dialogue, and religious tolerance.
Dealing with extremists is a very sensitive and tricky affair, which calls for a visionary leadership that can steer the country through a very thorny path and President Musharraf is the most capable leader to cope with the situation. Pakistan is engaged in a multi-pronged strategy: The present government has kept at bay all the extremist organizations involved in training and breeding terrorism in a very discreet manner, while on the other hand, it considers Islamic injunctions and values as a basic Code of life. Most of the people in the West, denounce the “climate of fear” promoted by Washington neoconservatives.
These Western human right movements have set for themselves the ambitious task of promoting a “new engagement” with Islam based on dialogue, mutual respect and tolerance.
The Western intelligentsia calls for a need to acknowledge that Muslim values do not pose a threat to the strategic values of Western society.
Muslims do not hate Western values, but they hate American policies of global injustices. The Westerners have realized the importance of dialogue at all levels. A new realization is under way which supports the thesis of an alternative approach beyond laying waste to large segments of the region’s landscape.
The message Conflicts Forum is seeking to propagate may be summed up in a few simple propositions: The worsening estrangement between the West and Islam is a source of grave concern; This estrangement has brought suffering to Muslims in many parts of the world and has also damaged Western societies by severe restrictions on civil liberties; Muslim values pose no threat to Western societies.
In fact, Muslims share a desire for free elections, civil liberties, good management in the governmental affairs, moderate enlightenment, and non-corrupt government.
There is a need to stimulate a rigorous understanding in the West of the causes and varied nature of “armed political action” by Islamic groups and to distinguish this from what is usually labeled as “terrorism.” It is a fundamental mistake to label Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations, and to isolate them under American and Israeli pressure is unfair. On the contrary, it is essential to bring these groups into the political process and, in the Palestinian case, to include them in the leadership of the national movement. It is also necessary that we strike at the root cause of terrorism.
Alastair Crooke, a founding member of Conflicts Forum, wants leading policymakers from Europe and America to break a taboo on “talking to terrorists” by meeting representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah, political organizations such as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami from Pakistan.
The Conflicts Forum is backed by former government, military and intelligence officials in Europe and the United States who reject many of the methods of the “war on terror”.
Swimming against the current is never easy. The coming year will demonstrate whether international think tanks can convince the public, the press and the policymakers that a new Western perception of Islam is not only possible but urgently necessary.