Since I am finishing my own book on the relationship between the Islamic challenge and the great powers, I read Kull’s essay with considerable interest.  His essay is interesting and contains more than a few insights about Muslims.  I think his insights are worth considering, because he is much more informed than most of the other written work that I have read on the subject.

One of Kull’s observations that captured my interest deserves some attention.  Describing one of the “most fundamental” aspects of the Muslim perception about America, he writes: Muslims are of the view “…that America seeks to undermine Islam – a perception held by overwhelming majorities.”  The author goes on to add:

Muslims tend to view current events through the lens of a long-standing historical narrative.  According to this narrative, going back to the Middle Ages Christian forces from the West have persistently sought to break the grip of Islam on its people.  By holding fast, Muslims believe, they were able to flourish as a civilization, at times superseding the West in many dimensions.  Today, they believe, that struggle continues – except that today the challenge is greater.  Western cultural products are seen as seductively undermining Islamic culture.  More importantly, Western powers have gained extraordinary military might that is seen as threatening and coercively dominating the Muslim world and propping up secular autocrats ready to accommodate the West.”

Since I have been reflecting over the issue of why there is so much antipathy between the United States and the world of Islam, my own tentative conclusion is that it is the outcome of America’s long-held perception (which goes back to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran, which brought to power a stridently anti-American government) that Islam as a political force
is determined to challenge the United States’ global dominance.  The first phase of that challenge would come within the world of Islam (it can be argued that it is already a reality in Iran, and it is likely to become a reality if or when anti-U.S. governments are  elected as a result of political changes stemming from the Arab Awakening).  Then, in the next phase, it is likely to become a global challenge, since the followers of Islam reside all over the world.  That perception was only intensified in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.  The anti-U.S. rhetoric of al-Qaida continues to echo throughout the Muslim world, even when that entity is experiencing a palpable decline, largely as a result of the assassination of Usama Bin Laden at the hands of the U.S. Special Forces in May of this year.

The United States never understood that the chief strength of al-Qaida’s message was not related to Islam as a religion, but with Islam as a political force.  From the religious perspective, no one can create a universally accepted argument (universal in its applicability among the Muslims of the world) about the implementation of Jihad against the United States – that is when it is  legitimate to declare a Jihad or who is a legitimate authority to make such a declaration.  However, from the perspective of politics, a powerful argument can be made – and was indeed made by al-Qaida and other Islamist groups – that the United States has a fight with Islam.

The United States had to respond to attacks on its territory by invading Afghanistan, where originally planned by al-Qaida  originally planned those attacks.  However, the rhetoric and the palpable resolve of the Bush administration to remain on the offensive under the general rubric of “global war on terrorism,” perpetuated its own narrative, especially on the part of the
Muslims that America is determined to dominate the world of Islam through military attacks and occupation.  That  narrative and the decision of President George W. Bush to invade Iraq, more than anything that al-Qaida would have said or done, became the mother’s milk for anti-American feelings inside various Muslim countries.

From the American side, the perception related to Islam may not have been driven primarily by the treatment of it as a religion, but as a political force.  In fact, a lot of Western “experts” on Islam take the position that America’s problem is with “political  Islam” and not with the religion of Islam.  Sadly, a number of Muslim scholars, in parroting Western scholars, have adopted that rhetoric.  However, anyone who knows anything about Islam knows that politics is only the flip side of Islam as a religion.  For a majority of Muslims anywhere in the world, Islam is both a religion and a political force.  As such, Islam contains its notions of government, its own rules of governance (the Shariah), and its own code of conduct in terms of dealing with the West.  There is a lot of room for interpretation on all those issues and there is no one prevailing dominant perspective on them.

This is one of the most controversial  of the problem that exists between Islam and the West. While al-Qaida and other  self-styled “Jihadists” have articulated their militant rhetoric related to the West and how to deal with it (i.e., only by perpetrating terrorist attacks), there is no equally voluble or dominant narrative that came out from the side of any Muslim government countering that of the Islamists.  As a complicated political force and religion, Islam needed equally sophisticated narratives explaining the meaning of a lot of concepts like Jihad, Ijtihad, and the need of interpreting both of them in the ever-changing intricacies of a globalized world.  However, no Muslim scholar – much less a Muslim politician – could muster enough mental prowess or courage to respond to the challenge.  Thus, the best that he Western world knows about the relationship between Muslims and the West is through the notion of anger.  It is mostly an intellectual cop-out on the part of its peddlers, because they lack other multi-dimensional and sophisticated explanations.

Muslim attitudes, at the least, are a potpourri of feelings of antipathy, frustration, and even anger for being at the bottom of the barrel in the hierarchy of nations.  The Quran indentifies them as the best of the chosen people.  Yet what confuses them is why that divine statement does not include them among the most powerful and influential nations of the contemporary world.  Muslims might be angry at their inability to alter their plight as a collective entity or as individuals when it comes to their failure to bring an end to enduring autocratic rules in their polities.  They rightly blame those rules for keeping them backward and poor and for their incapability to control their destiny in the realms of politics and economics.  Perhaps they feel too strongly in blaming the West for its support of autocratic rulers; however, no one can ever state that they are wrong in holding that conviction.

Being backward, weak, and subservient to the West were motivating forces behind China’s desire to become a premier rising power of the world.  However, the most important initial step that China took in becoming a rising power was when it
succeeded in overthrowing the highly corrupt regime of Chiang Kai-shek, which was also a friend of the West.  Neither the Arabs nor the Muslims of other nations succeeded in creating governments that are even half as dedicated about becoming a world-class power as the PRC (Contemporary Turkey might be one rare exception).  Muslim autocrats seem happy to be heading the regimes that kept their peoples backward and weak.  Those rulers treat those traits as guarantees for prolonging their discreditable rule.

Still, Kull is right in noting that Muslim anger stems from the fact that the United States has been determined about imposing its own model of secularism on Muslim countries, because “most Muslims want to preserve the Islamic foundations of their society and want their public life to be infused with Islamic principles.  Most want Shariah to play a greater role.  They want a quality of piety to pervade their culture. Integrating these aspirations with liberal ideas of democracy and freedom of religion is a decidedly challenging endeavor.”  Consequently, according to Kull, “…it is particularly infuriating to Muslims when America intervenes in a way that is destabilizing, trying to root for one imagined side against another, in what Americans conceive of as an inevitable evolution toward the victory of one side.”

As much as the United States portrays itself as a champion of democracy, when it comes to the world of Islam, the lone superpower wishes to see the establishment of a “secular” democracy only.  Bush was clearly disappointed, indeed shocked, at the emergence of an Islamic democracy in the post-Saddam Iraq, which he wanted to emerge as a prototype of the Jeffersonian
democracy in the Middle East.  To add further to his dismay, the citizens of the occupied Palestine overwhelmingly voted for Hamas, a predominantly Islamist party, in the election of January 2006.  Even after entering into office, Hamas refused to either renounce violence or recognize Israel so that it could negotiate with the Jewish state the political resolution of the Palestinian
conflict.  The immediate response of the United States and the EU was the issuance of a threat that they would cut off funds for the Palestinian Authority (PA).  That decision became the basis for denying any chances of effective governance for Hamas, and thereby leaving the entire Palestinian conflict on the precipice of another disaster of a major proportion.  To be fair, however, Hamas, as well as the West, are equally responsible for this catastrophe in the making.

As the countries of the Middle East and North Africa experience the Arab Awakening, the American hope is that the eventual outcome of the ouster of a number of aging autocrats is the emergence of secular democracy.  Needless to say, the chances of the emergence of such a model of governance in a number of Arab countries appear reasonably good for now.  However, the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Al-Nahda (Renaissance) party in Tunisia remain very well-established Islamist parties, one cannot rule out the emergence of a coalition in which the Islamists will also play a visible role, at least initially.  The major unknown about this issue is whether the Islamist parties will remain committed to the proposition of the evolution of a pluralistic democracy – as they appear to be for now – or the moderate elements of them would be replaced by the hardliners or the self-styled Jihadists.

From the perspectives of the Muslims of the Arab world, the Arab Awakening holds a great promise that they would take charge of their destiny, even though the high visibility of France and the UK in the immediate aftermath of the downfall (though not yet the capture of) Muammar Qaddafi is a worrisome development.  Given the reprehensible legacy of colonialism of those two countries in the Arab world, the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) has every reason to remain wary about not losing any control to the representatives of those two countries or to the United States in its eagerness to get technical assistance in governing Libya in the coming months and years.

In the final analysis, Muslims have reason to be angry at the United States; however, they must ensure that, while they remain ambivalent or unhappy toward Washington, they do not lose track of finding a rapprochement with it.  After all, the United States has an established record of coming to the rescue of Kuwait when it was invaded by Saddam Hussein.  Washington also played a
crucial role in the Yugoslavian conflict and in bringing an end to the Serbian massacre and dominance of the Bosnian Muslims.

As a starting point, Muslims need to shed their legacy of believing in conspiracies and stop looking for one-dimensional explanations related to the United States’ attitude toward Islam.  At the same time, US decision makers need to revisit their cultural prejudice of imposing secularism on the world of Islam.  This palpable feeling of condescension toward Muslim countries has to be cast aside if the United States is to have even a decent chance of playing the role of an honest broker in the Muslim regions in the future.

The post-9/11 involvement of the United States in the world of Islam should have provided its top officials a sophisticated understanding about Muslims’ feelings toward secularism, especially when proposed or imposed from the West.  Secularism might be tried as an important rule of governance in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, or Libya.  However, that experimentation has a greater chance of success if it is implemented from within; it is most likely to fail if it is imposed from abroad.  If the United States should have learned one lesson after invading Iraq, it is that externally imposed democracy is likely to be very tenable at best.  Only when it is adopted as a result of popular demand from within that it holds a high promise of success.  Indonesia is an excellent example of the correctness of that observation.

The awesome asymmetry of power between the United States and the Taliban of Afghanistan is such that it creates a spurious sense of hubris in Washington that it alone can decide the pace and intensity of the military conflict, and that it alone can set the timetable for the withdrawal of its forces from the conflict zone.  That was the major assumption of Henry Kissinger’s approach to negotiating the modalities of bringing about an end to the conflict with the North Vietnamese representatives in the 1970s.  The United States found out, to its bitter surprise, how wrong Kissinger really was then.  The North Vietnamese had a stout sense of America’s growing vulnerabilities – the public war protest movement and the intensifying refusal of the U.S. Congress to finance that war.

In Iraq, thanks to the Sahwa movement of the Sunni Iraqi insurgents, the United States did not face defeat, even though it came to the precipice of it.  It eventually succeeded in creating a false semblance of victory, when the level of violence went down in Iraq and the Bush administration brought about major troop withdrawals.  However, as we are finding out on a weekly basis, the conflict in Iraq is far from over.  Thus, only future historians will decide whether the United States won or lost in Iraq.

Things are entirely different in Afghanistan in 2011.  It is a conflict that refuses to go away.  America cannot decide whether or not it wants to implement the counterinsurgency (CI) doctrine in Afghanistan that General David Petraeus famously (and ostensibly successfully) implemented in Iraq.  President Obama’s chief objective is to create some ground realities that would convince the highly skeptical American voters that he is winning in Afghanistan.  So, he is putting all his eggs into the basket of Counterterrorism (CT) strategy, which does not require a high number of boots on the ground in Afghanistan.  There seems to be a profound conclusion in Washington that there will be a credible government in Kabul by July 2012 that would be able to govern the entire country, and that Afghanistan’s security forces will be able to replace the international security assistance forces (ISAF).  That variable became an important aspect of the “talking points” that the talking heads in Washington have been using since President Obama’s speech on June 22, 2011.

However, the ground realities in Afghanistan have a special way of making fools of all of the Washington-based (or Kabul-based for that matter) experts whose full-time indulgence is to live in a make-believe world.  The surprise attack of June 29, 2001, when the heavily guarded InterContinental Hotel was attacked by Taliban suicide attackers, jolted all the forecasters to reexamine their conclusions regarding America’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.  President Hamid Karzai described it as “the worst attack in the Afghan capital for months…”  What is important to note is that, by carrying out that attack, the insurgents are “trying to tighten their psychological grip on the capital with a two-pronged campaign to sow urban terror and extend their influence in surrounding provinces.”

So, what should the Obama administration do now?  The most obvious and vital option is to abandon all notions of withdrawal of American troops and introduce a mega-strategy to fix Afghanistan through nation-building.  I know, “nation-building” is currently a four letter word in Washington, and there is absolutely no constituency for it there.  However, the aforementioned Pottery Barn rule is just as applicable to President Obama today as it was applicable to President Bush in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  The only difference is that Iraq in 2011 continues to create a spurious sense of stability, which is eroding steadily, while political stability in Afghanistan has never existed since 1978, when it was invaded and occupied by the Former Soviet Union.

America’s post-World War II success stories – Japan and Germany – are shining examples of nation-building that lasted over several decades.  And both of those countries were “modern” polities before the war.  Afghanistan also requires nation-building.  However, unlike Germany and Japan of the post-World War II years, it will require an infinitely longer period of time to fix.  It has remained a hellish place since 1978.  It is an absolutely corrupt society with a very high degree of illiteracy, gross absence of institutions, and rules of engagement for “good governance.”  It is a place where obscurantism rules all walks of life.  It has a large expatriate community that can play a crucial role in nation-building.  However, that community is too smart to resettle in Afghanistan as long as warlordism, an opium trade, and religion-based terrorism rule the day.  But, they are likely to return to Afghanistan if the Obama administration signals its serious commitment to nation-building strategy in Afghanistan.

The option of nation-building may appear more palatable for the Obama administration if it considers the fact that it may have no intention of totally withdrawing from Afghanistan.  If it plans to keep a sizeable number of troops in country for the purpose of continuing its exercise of its counterterrorism (CT) strategy, the implementation of that strategy without elaborate  nation-building promises to sink that country deeper into chaos and instability.  Make no mistake, these are variables that both al-Qaida and the Taliban prefer, in order to escalate their own effective capabilities for carrying out deadly attacks and mayhem.

In the non-Arab Muslim countries -Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Indonesia – al-Qaida only added to the political instability and turbulence.  It used Jihad as a way of creating chaos and instability.  However, it had no elaborate blueprint or ideological vision for the future.  Even the Islamist thinkers – starting from Abul Ala Maududi, Sayyid Qutb, Abdullah al-Azzam, Musab al-Suri, Abu Bakr Naji, or al-Maqdisi – made no contribution to how an Islamic state would survive and progress in a world whose chief traits were escalating modernity, complexity, and interconnectedness (aka globalization).  All of the aforementioned Islamists proffered anti-democratic rhetoric, and condemned the present political order in Muslim countries as a modern version of Jahiliyya (ignorance). But they had nothing positive, constructive, or substantive to offer, except for advocating for the establishment of an inchoate Muslim Caliphate.  Even that notion was a hollow one, since it had no substantive political and economic plan except to emulate what existed during the days of the Prophet of Islam.  So, long before Usama Bin Laden became an isolated figure in a comfortable villa in Abbottabad, he, as well as his once attention-grabbing organization, had become an anachronism.

The history of the emergence of al-Qaida may be examined in the light of how forces of change emerged and then became irrelevant in the world of Islam in the post-World War II era.  Through such an analysis, one may also discern the generational change and how a slew of ideas became popular and then lost their glamour when they failed to find a recipe for the suffering and backwardness of the world of Islam.

The abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 deprived the Muslim world of even a symbol of common identity, except for a sentimental longing for the notion of the Caliphate.  Mustapha Kemal and his generation of leaders wrongly blamed Islam for the degeneration of the Ottoman Empire into the “sick man of Europe.”

Outside the Arab world, no ideology emerged that could galvanize Muslims, except for a general despair related to the abolition of the Caliphate.  In the Arab world, the notion of pan-Arabism emerged as a unifying ideology and as a promise for change in the 1950s and 1960s.  It was to unite all the Arab nations into one whole entity, something along the lines of what we know about the European Union.  There were a lot of questions, however.  For instance, which Arab state or leader was to be in the lead?  What would be the basis for his acquisition of leadership of an “Arab nation?”  No one could satisfactorily answer those and other related questions.

In reality, pan-Arabism divided the Arab states into republican (or “revolutionary”) ones and monarchies, with neither side liking or willing to cooperate with the other.  The ideological struggle between the two sides was depicted as the “Arab Cold War.”  In fact, the bloody revolution of Iraq in 1958, which transformed it from a monarchy into a republic, demonstrated how violent the struggle between the two sides really was.  The Yemeni civil war in the 1960s was fought with the active participation of the Saudis – who supported the royalist forces – and Nasser’s troops – who backed the republican ones.

The pan-Arabism became a spent force after the 1967 war between the Arab states and Israel.  That war brought about a humiliating defeat of the Arab military and a huge loss of Arab territories.  It also created new ground realities in the geographical size of Israel. Even though Nasser died in 1970, the Arab leaders who emerged as his staunch supporters and followers of Pan-Arabism, found themselves beating the hollow drum of that ideology with very little support among the Arab populace.

The Jewish state used the huge territories acquired as booty in the 1967 war and as a permanent basis for stalling the return of territories to the Arab states, except for its peace deal with Egypt under the general rubric of the Camp David Agreement of 1978.  That agreement, even though it brought about the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai desert –which belonged to Egypt – it also permanently removed that country from the ranks of the Arab states that were still “at war” with Israel.  There was to be no more Arab fighting front against the Jewish state.

No other ideology replacing pan-Arabism emerged in the 1970s until the Islamic revolution of Iran in 1979, which transformed that country into an Islamic republic.  The idea that an Islamic government could be established through a revolution galvanized the Sunni world.  In Pakistan, the 1970s was a decade when “Islamization” emerged as the state policy.  As a result, Sunni religious parties became increasingly vocal in their attempts to bring Islam to the very central political arena of that country.  When General Zia-ul-Haq came to power after overthrowing the civilian government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Islamization ran rampant in all walks of that country’s political life.  The Islamic militancy of contemporary Pakistan had its roots in the 1970s.

The Egyptian Islamists, who were languishing in the dungeons of President Gamal Abdel Nasser throughout the 1950s and 1960s, or were given political asylum in Saudi Arabia, kept alive the notion of using Jihad to overthrow a number of Arab regimes.  However, before that Iranian revolution, their advocacy of Jihad had little or no appeal among the Muslim masses.  After the Iranian revolution, the idea itself acquired ample popularity.

The Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan and the U.S.-Pakistan-Saudi response to that development through the implementation of Jihad provided that concept an enormous boost.  Pakistan was already steadily emerging as an Islamist state throughout the 1970s under the dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq.  It was also a place where Jihad was being promoted as an official tool of government for political purposes.

Thus, another generation of leaders and a new idea for political struggle was becoming popular in the world of Islam.  Usama Bin Laden got his exposure to the use of Jihad as a political tool in the 1980s in that U.S.-Pakistani-sponsored war against the Soviet Union.  He, along with Abdullah Azzam (a Palestinian Islamist, Bin Laden’s teacher, and a Jihadist) emerged as some of the new leaders among the Arab fighters – aka “Arab Afghans” – of the Afghan war of the 1980s.  Even though there is considerable disagreement about how much fighting the Arab Afghans really saw during that war, what is important here is that the notion of Jihad was fast emerging as a tool for confronting the great powers as a result of the Afghan war.

The 1990s was the decade when al-Qaida emerged as an organization propagating global Jihad.  It especially targeted the United States as the chief “enemy” of Islam and the primary supporter of corrupt autocratic regimes in the world of Islam.  It haphazardly advocated or even carried out “regional Jihad” in the form of insurgent attacks in Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.  It established a nexus with the Chechen and Uighur separatist forces of Russia and China.  It also established strong links with Pakistani Jihadist organizations, which were also used by that government in destabilizing Indian-administered Kashmir.

Al-Qaida was also reported to have been involved in attacking the American forces stationed in Saudi Arabia, in the aftermath of the end of the Gulf War of 1991.  Indeed, the American decision to leave its forces in Saudi Arabia after that war became the chief reason for al-Qaida-sponsored attacks on the forces and assets of the lone superpower in the various parts of the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, and the Horn of Africa.  That organization saw the peak of its activism (or even popularity within the world of Islam) between 1999 and 2001.  The year 2001 will be known for al-Qaida’s attack on the U.S. homeland as well as the year when it was destroyed as an organization because of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

Through its ideological rhetoric, as well as through its heavy use of terrorism, al-Qaida underscored the anger within the Arab world and within the world of Islam related to the prevalence of highly corrupt and equally inept autocratic regimes, which were strongly supported by the U.S. and its Western allies.  However, by solely relying on violent methods to express its anger (or as a tactic to bring about change), it failed miserably.  The entire debate about selecting between the “far enemy” and the “near enemies” for conducting Jihad – useful though it might have been for the internal purposes of al-Qaida – only underscored the durability of the autocratic system and the dexterity of the autocrats in strengthening Western support for their rule. Out of frustration from its failure to oust any dictator of the Arab world, al-Qaida decided to strike the United States.  That decision truly globalized the conflict between Washington and al-Qaida.  The lone superpower’s democratic openness also became one of the chief reasons for its vulnerability for such an action.

The years between 2002 and 2011 were marked by a high degree of adaptability of al-Qaida to survive – from an organization to a movement.  The Internet-dominated globalized world was a perfect place for the popularity of “leaderless” Jihad.  However, that suggestion, which became popular among counterterrorism specialists, was undermined by some of the initial evidence captured by the CIA at Bin Laden’s lair after his death.  It was reported that he was very much in operational command of his organizations in Somalia, Yemen, and parts of North Africa.

Between 2001 and 2011, al-Qaida also became a victim of its own destructive Takfiri perspectives, which treated even Muslims as “infidels” who did not share that worldview.  The mayhem related to the Takfiri-driven activities of al-Qaida in Iraq gave birth to the Sahwa (awakening) movement, whereby the Sunni insurgents of that country actively sought (and eagerly offered) cooperation from the U.S. occupation forces to fight against al-Qaida.  The ultimate outcome was the success of General David Petraeus’ “Surge” strategy, which is considered largely responsible for bringing about the much desired stability inside occupied Iraq.  Given the overall primacy assigned to the use of violence and mayhem by al-Qaida in all its theaters of operation, one cannot argue that its defeat at the collective hands of the Sahwa-U.S. military forces in Iraq was the outcome of the fact that it no longer existed as an organization.  The heavy use of violence, using of innovative ways of attacking U.S. troops through the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and the use of suicide bombings became the signature events of that entity between 2003 and 2007.

Even from the perspective of generational change, the leadership style of Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq or the Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP) remained highly destructive and equally prone to creating chaos through the use of violence.  The idea of establishing the Caliphate became a euphemism for creating nothing but a failed state wherever al-Qaida or the al-Qaida-affiliated groups became proactive.  The best (or to be precise, worst) examples of this phenomenon were Somalia (the poster-child of a failed state) and Yemen.

Through its intense use of murderous tactics and its proclivity for creating mayhem and chaos, al-Qaida ended up delegitimizing the popular grievances of Muslims and Arabs about their continued miserable existence under tyrannical rule, not to mention the fact that the U.S. and the rest of the West remained highly supportive of such governments.  Thus, the Arab dictators felt quite safe before the dawn of the Arab Awakening in Tunisia last December, which caught everyone by surprise.

The Arab Awakening is a highly unique movement from a variety of perspectives. First of all, it comprises a new generation of educated nameless and faceless youth willing to use conventional political tools (protests and demonstrations as opposed to IEDs or suicide bombings) to create pressure on dictators to resign.  As a general rule, the participants of the Arab Awakening are not driven by violence.  Second, as a grassroots movement, it genuinely represents the aspirations of the people tooverthrow the extant dictatorships and to live in a democratic system, even though the democracy-related preferences have not yet emerged as an alternative that has powerful massive support.  Third, the adroit use of the social media – the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc. – is generally regarded as the chief reason for its seemingly uncontrolled popularity in various Arab countries.  Fourth, even though all Arab countries are predominantly Muslim, Islam seems to have played virtually no role in its spiraling ascent.  Fifth, as a social movement, it appears to be beyond the control or influence of any Western power, especially the United States, which had been so used to dominating the strategic affairs of Arab Middle East.  Finally, if the Arab Awakening were to result in bringing to power democratic governments, then it promises to enable that region to be free from subservience to any Western power.  As such, it is also likely to place considerable non-military type of pressure on Israel to accept a political resolution to the Palestinian conflict.  Israel has proven itself to be too deft to be pressured by pro-Western and inept Arab dictatorships into resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict in the past.  Democratically elected governments of the Arab countries of the future are likely to be armed with popular consent for resolving the Palestinian conflict.  Such a posture will accept the Jewish state as a legitimate entity within the Middle East, thereby removing the major objection of Israel to agree to major territorial concessions for the emergence of a free Palestine.

The greatest achievements of the Arab Awakening to date are that it ousted two of the longest-ruling dictators – Zein el-Abideen Bin Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt – something al-Qaida with all its rhetorical bluster and extreme commitment to violence could not.  The second most significant achievement of this social movement is that it is about to bring pluralistic democracy to both countries.  Once that promise becomes a reality, the Arab awakening may truly be discerned at least as revolutionary as the democratization of Eastern European countries after the implosion of the Soviet Union.  On second thought, the Arab Awakening’s success in democratization of the Arab world would be greater than anything we have seen in recent times.

But at this time, the Arab Awakening remains very much a work in progress.  It is putting an enormous amount of pressure on Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen to quit.  Qaddafi’s regime might also be ousted within a matter of weeks to a few months.  The true test of the Arab Awakening in those two countries will be to see whether it remains secular and democratic in terms of its quest for future style of governance, or whether it is likely to be hijacked by Islamist extremists.  The threats to the introduction of democracy in Yemen are much greater than those in Libya.  Lest we forget, Syria is also experiencing the rising tide of political protests.  The downing of the regime of Bishara al-Assad would probably be one of the greatest achievements of the Arab Awakening.  At the same time, it is also fraught with even greater risks of being sidetracked by religious extremists.

As this brief tour through the development of various ideologies indicates, different ideologies surfaced during different eras and became popular among the youth of that era for airing the grievances of Arabs and Muslims.  However, none of them carried as much hope and aspirations as the Arab Awakening with regard to its potential for bringing about radical change in the ruling styles within their polities.  It has men and women enthusiastically clamoring for change; it has people of all religions; and it is driven by the use of powerful technological tools for globally disseminating their demands for the transformation of the power structure.  The dictators – most of whom belong to a distant and archaic past – do not know how to win them over except to fall back on the brutal arm of suppression and violence to stay in power.  But then they realize that they, along with their ruling style, are things of the past. Two of them (Ali and Mubarak) are gone; the rest of them will soon follow.  For the first time, it seems that a truly youth-led movement is gathering momentum as the true voice of Arabs and Muslims.  If it results in the establishment of democracy – a direction that events seem to be taking in Tunisia and Egypt – that will be one of the greatest developments of this young century.  It is only through a sustained support for the Arab Awakening that the international community may be able to ensure that al-Qaida never regains its previous popularity or momentum.

The cause of Governor Taseer’s murder was the blasphemy laws of Pakistan that are being invoked to raise the level of tensions by accusing non-Muslims of insulting the religion or the Prophet of Islam, and then not even having an unbiased inquiry into the accusation.  He was a critic of it and was a strong voice about repealing them.  According to reports, there is a widespread support for such laws inside Pakistan.  As an example of the popularity of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan, consider this.  More than 500 scholars of the Jamaat Ihle-Sunnat, a relatively moderate Islamist group, “have advised Muslims not to offer the funeral prayers of Governor Punjab Salman Taseer nor try to lead the prayers.”  They also advised people against “expression of grief or sympathy on the death of the governor, as those who support blasphemy of the Prophet are themselves indulging in blasphemy.” The environment of fear is intensifying, and religious fanatics are having a field day in defaming a religion one of whose chief tenets is tolerance.

The murder of a high ranking official by his supposedly elite guard also points to the fact that Pakistan’s security forces are being regularly contaminated by the inflamed rhetoric of those who propagate apocryphal stories of “defamation” of Islam and stories about how Islam is under constant “threat.”  The only and mounting reality is that the chief threat to Islam is coming from those who are spreading such stories nonsensical stories, who are accusing minorities of defaming Islam, and who are murdering those who are asking them to tone down their insane rhetoric.

What most people (especially those who are at the helm of the government in Washington) fail to understand is that the civilian government of Pakistan is too weak to stand up to the rising tide of extremism.  Fanatics anywhere do not have to have large number of supporters.  Even their small gatherings are so voluble and so dedicated to their cause at a given time and at a given place that they tend to create simultaneous a movement and an environment of terror.  That movement, if not countered by the law enforcement forces, tends to gather momentum and expands.  It seems that most—if not every—official in Pakistan is getting scared in that environment of terror, getting scared of being accused of as an “agent of America” if he/she criticizes the irrational ululations of the forces of extremism.  The country is full of stories of conspiracies: about America, about India, and about the “secret” plans of taking away Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, and, above all, about conspiracies regarding Islam.

What is happening to Pakistan, whose religious enlightenment—not of the imaginary type promoted by General Pervez Musharraf, but a genuine one was a living force at one time? 

The origin of the malignancy of extremism go back to Zulfiqar Ali—father of Benazir Bhutto—who started appeasing Islamic parties in the early 1970ss to prove his own commitment to Islam.  However, Bhutto was too much of a secularist and too hard a whisky drinker to fool anyone.  Then came Zia ul-Haq, the Islamist General, who unabashedly used Islam to stay in power.  In Zia’s regime those contentious blasphemy laws were originally promulgated.

The post-9/11 environment created a profound siege mentality inside Pakistan.  George W. Bush’s warnings to Pakistan—that either you are with us or you are with the terrorists—offended the dignity of Pakistan.  The global perspective that Islam was under attack by the world’s lone superpower put everyone on the offensive in Pakistan.  Islamists and other religious extremists thrived under such a charged environment.  No Pakistani official dared to challenge them fearing the dreaded charge of being an agent of America.  While Usama Bin Laden and his ilk was envisioned as the enemy of the civilized world in the West.  Inside Pakistan, Ben Laden’s infamous phrase of about the “crusade by the Christians and Zionists against Islam” was emerged as the new enemy.  And that perception, over time, transformed itself into a siege mentality.

General Musharraf played a crucial role in that transformation, once again, to extend the term of his rule.  He made George Bush believe that he was the last and real promise against the takeover by the Islamist extremists, while at the same time coalescing, conniving with, and appeasing the Islamists inside Pakistan to stay in power. 

Considering how “superb” America’s intelligence agencies are in their “just in time” analyses and producing “agile intelligence,” Musharraf fooled Bush for a long time.  In the meantime, religious extremists continued to grow.  The world only knows about the infamous Deobandi Madrasas (religious schools) of Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier that are spreading the ideology of militancy.  However, the entire country is being contaminated by the Deobandi-Wahhabi rhetoric of religious fanaticism, obscurantism, and atavism. 

Under such an environment, the most crucial question is how untainted the security forces of Pakistan are these days?  Even General Ashfaq Kayani cannot answer that question with certainty.  Just look at the ISI and its own so-called “rogue elements” that are reported to be sympathizing with the Taliban of Afghanistan.  Who can stay with any amount of confidence how much infiltration has been made in the Pakistani Army by the Taliban of Afghanistan?  These are the questions that the Pakistani military’s high command must find answers to earnestly and most urgently.  They do not need to be on the defensive in answering these questions to the Americans.  After all, those questions are about the long-term stability of Pakistan.  The recipe of Pakistan continued existence as a nation-state rests in promoting Islamic moderation, which is the real face of Islam.

One of the first impressions that a reader gets from Obama’s NSS is that he is quite sensitive about the remarkably transforming global environment where economic security, more than the fear of transnational terrorism, is driving America’s foreign policy. Even the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland – as horrible as they were – did not make even a slight dent in its global leadership. However, Bush’s Rambo-style “global war on terrorism” jeopardized the European consensus related to America’s leadership. In most Third World countries, that leadership was seriously questioned, and even rejected. The American phrase-makers, who applauded the “shock and awe” with which the regime of Saddam Hussein was dismantled in Iraq, were thunderstruck when the Iraqi insurgency created its own shock and awe for the lone superpower. The world came to know that shock and awe as the “Iraqi quagmire.”

Obama’s NSS is issued in the aftermath of the global meltdown of 2008-2009, which seriously challenged America’s global dominance, because, inter alia, it threatened to constrain its ability to pay for its global military interventions. The notion of “imperial stretch,” popularized by Paul Kennedy in the 1980s – but which remains highly relevant in the first decade of the 21st Century – became a reality more than ever before. What is also sobering is that the PRC, the erstwhile “proto-peer competitor” of the United States, is beginning to look more like another superpower in the realm of economic power and in terms of its success in building spheres of influence, even in far off places in Africa and Latin America.

One of the foremost strands of Obama’s NSS is that it underscores the fundamental connections between “our national security” and “our national competitiveness.” That is a highly nuanced statement, which requires the rejuvenation of “a whole of government approach” domestically, and multilateralism abroad. That will be done by “renewing America’s leadership” through “building at home and shaping abroad.” The unstated part of this phrase is that America’s ability to shape abroad has markedly diminished as the global arena witnesses increased hyper-activism from the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), the Group of 20 (G-20) nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – where China and Russia are dominant, with the Central Asian countries are becoming increasingly assertive, and where Iran, Pakistan, and India have joined as “observers.”

The second noteworthy strand of the new NSS is that the shrilled tone of Bush’s NSS has been replaced by a sober recognition that, only by implementing a series of nuanced policies rather than by adopting bumper-sticker-type slogans, will America resolve challenges to its global dominance.

The third major theme of the new NSS is its resolve of “pursuing comprehensive engagement.” China, India, and Russia will remain America’s focus of strategic engagement, but an interesting addition of G-20 countries is yet more evidence of the much-heralded pragmatism of the Obama administration in the new century. The neoconservatives – who were living in a fool’s paradise during the Bush administration and thought that the world would roll over and play dead while the United States built Pax-Americana – are likely to have a fit on this point, because it is a major departure from the conventional American spotlight on the G-8 countries. It is worth noting that those countries have not disappeared from the global economic scenes; however, they have certainly become palpably less relevant.

A list of conventional threats to America’s national security is appropriately included: nuclear proliferation, al-Qaida’s interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction (a more realistic mention ought to be that organization’s continued search for a “dirty bomb”), the Arab-Israeli conflict, the nuclear weapons-related to Iran and North Korea, etc.

The United States remains determined to “broaden its engagement with Muslim countries around the world,” a challenge that the Bush administration attempted to tackle, but failed miserably, in view of its involvement in the humiliation of the Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib by American servicemen and women, the torture of prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay prison, the use of torture in questioning the terrorism suspects in general, and a regular practice by the CIA of kidnapping Muslim clerics and other individuals on suspicion of their involvement in terrorist organizations, and their subsequent rendition for questioning to Muslim countries, where the use of brutal torture was common practice.

Obama’s NSS is rightly focused on al-Qaida. Countering its threat to the security and stability of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and more to the point, to the domestic security of the United States, tops America’s strategic agenda. As an Islamist group – that is working as a movement in some regions, while still participating in the activities of other Islamist groups in Iraq and North Africa, or remaining very much alive as an organization in the Arabian Peninsula – America’s fight with that entity is far from over.

The overall reception of Obama’s NSS throughout different regions of the world is likely to be more positive than those issued by President Bush. Through this document, President Obama is categorically expressing this country’s resolve to lead, not as a global sheriff, but as a builder of regional and global consensus on all issues of high politics. Lest we forget, that modus operandi made America the world’s most durable superpower.

The mounting protest against the Islamic Republic in Iran is in the process of becoming a social movement. Sidney Tarrow, a specialist on the subject, defines a social movement as collective challenges (to elites and authorities) by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interactions with elites, opponents, and authorities. He specifically distinguishes social movements from political parties and interest groups; and that is an important distinction. Social movements in the context of this essay are not known for bringing about incremental political changes in the existing political system. More often than not, they result in radical changes leading to regime change. If the Iranian government is facing a rising tide of social movement, then that can be the best news for the United States, which has always despised the Islamic Republic for humiliating it through the “Iranian hostage crisis” in 1979. The ties between these two countries have remained tense since then. Iran, under the Ayatollahs, has consistently and virulently opposed the U.S. hegemony of its region. It has viewed that strategic affair as threatening to its stability and, indeed, to its very survival. The most recent cause of conflict between the two antagonistic countries is Iran’s nuclear research program. A regime change brought about through a social movement might also be the best news for Israel, who wishes to maintain its own nuclear monopoly, which has remained an ignored reality. However, that reality has created an ostensibly permanent military asymmetry between the states of that region and Israel. The Arab states have remained silently resentful of it. Iran, on the contrary, has decided to challenge it by staring its own nuclear research program.

It takes awhile for social movements to build momentum. However, once that momentum is built, there is no stopping them. Their strength stems from the fact that the disparate groups who have nothing in common but opposition to the existing regime, pitch in to build the strength of such movements. However, once they achieve their aim by overthrowing the existing regime, they turn against each other, thereby creating the aforementioned violence, instability, and mayhem. Political changes brought about as a result of a social movement are of a radical nature. As such, they result in a period of instability, which may last from a few months to a few years.

The Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 was the outcome of a social movement, which as a general principle, was opposed to monarchy. Ayatollah Khomeini became a leading voice of that revolution, especially during the last two-to-three years of the Shah’s rule. As that movement was developing, there was certainty that the revolution would result in the establishment of an Islamic government. When the revolution swept through Iran, the monarchy was thrown into the dustbin of history. But it was only fortuitously that the Islamic forces gained an upper hand in that social movement. That is also another idiosyncratic effect of a social movement: the ultimate outcome might not have been a planned or an anticipated one.

Since the regime of Mohammad Reza was acutely pro-Western and was accused of neglecting the Islamic heritage of Iran, the religious forces, as a vanguard of the social movement, decided to transform the country into an Islamic Republic. There is no conclusive evidence that emergence of a theocratic regime was what the majority of those who shed their blood in Iran really wanted. However, once the Islamic Republic emerged, it was hoped that some sort of moderation would eventually surface, whereby Iran would emerge as a country where there would be a reasonable balance between the forces of moderation, modernization, and Islamic identity. Alternatively, it was hoped that, once the dust of the revolutionary turbulence settled, Iran would become a democracy. There was every reason to believe that democracy—even some sort of Islamic democracy—would come to Iran. The Shia clergy, unlike their Sunni counterparts, always maintained a social distance with the powers-that-be of Iran. In that capacity, they sustained their role as an anti-regime force. The powerful tradition of quietism– whereby the religious establishment was not supposed to be part of the governance, only its silent critics—was the intellectual and theological basis for that. However, when the principle of the Vilayat-e-Faqih (rule of the cleric) took roots in Iran, all hopes of moderation and democracy dissipated.

The leaders of Islamic Republic never opted for moderation. The notion of the Vilayat-e-Faqih was more suited to the personality of the late Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, who never really manifested moderation in his thinking. Still, the notion of Vilayat itself was revolutionary for three additional reasons. First, it rejected the conventional notion of quietism among the Shia clerics. That very fact created a permanent schism within the ranks of the grand Ayatollahs or Iran and Iraq. Second, given the revolutionary aura of Khomeini, his successors were not going to enjoy the kind of legitimacy that he himself enjoyed. The chief strength of Khomeini was that he provided a kind of charismatic leadership whose basis was both religious and revolutionary. Even a grand Ayatollah or a marja-e-taqleed—which is the highest religious title assigned to a Shia cleric—could not have been as well-versed in leading a revolutionary movement as Khomeini proved himself to be when he entered triumphantly in the streets of Tehran in 1979.

His successor, Ali Khameini, was not only a religious lightweight, when compared to Khomeini, but he could never prove himself to be a deft political leader of any substance. That very fact necessitated that he disallow the forces of moderation and reform to gain an upper-hand. The hardline Islamic rule became the order of the day and the Islamic revolution continued to lose its legitimacy. Third, as the Iranian population grew younger, the revolution itself continued to grow older, archaic and outdated, not just in the fact that its leaders had gotten old, but also because their thinking about governance in an increasingly globalized world had also became similarly obsolete. In that capacity, the only way that the leaders of the Iranian government knew to respond was through increased control, and by brutally trampling on the aspirations of the young Iranian to be governed by a legitimate government. That need, while it is being suppressed by the paramilitary Basij and the Revolutionary Guards, is evolving steadily into a social movement, which promises not only to overthrow the hardline rulers of Iran, but it also threatens the very continuance of the Islamic form of government in that country. As the protest movement is being suppressed, the brutality of the suppression itself is very much a reminder of the days of the Mohammad Reza’s rule. What is even more remarkable is that Khameini and his ilk are demonstrating a collective sense of dementia. They had forgotten how the quickly the powerful the regime of Mohammad Reza collapsed under the mounting pressure of the forces of the Islamic revolution.

The Iranian social movement is operating in an era when the flow of information is unstoppable. Even the communist rulers of China are finding out the hard way that the “great firewall” of China cannot stop the spread of information and the yearning of the masses to be free sooner or later. If anything, the worldwide coverage given to the brutality committed against the forces of freedom in Iran is only further rejuvenating those forces. YouTube website and Twitter messages are working in full force, spreading the potent images of the craving for freedom. Millions of people all over the world saw the murder of Nida Soltan, a young Iranian female, at the hand of a security person. No other evidence was damning enough to make a case of what the Iranian protestors are facing in that country. Her face has become as powerful a symbol of the Iranian social movement just as the image of the lone hooded prisoner became an emblem of the brutal face of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

There appears to be a contest between the tyrannical forces of the regime to brutalize the protestors and the resolve of the latter to absorb pain, yet come back with even more force to overthrow the regime, while spreading the pictures of brutality to all corners of the world. The information revolution was in the days of its infancy helped the explosion related to the Khomeini revolution in the 1970s, when his sermons and calls for overthrowing “America’s Shah” was heard by everyone who yearned for freedom even in the remote regions of Iran. Now the shoe is on the other foot as when the same information revolution in its primacy is transmitting pictures of the brutality of Islamic regime via cell phones and YouTube to far off corners of the world.

How secure is the regime?

The uppermost question now is how secure is the Islamic regime in Iran. While its downfall does not seem imminent, even that indication should not be a source of comfort for the Supreme Leader Khameini and his ilk. The upcoming month of February might be of significant import for the government as well as for the protestors. The government forces are likely to use it to do their utmost to reestablish the legitimacy of the Revolution, as they did by orchestrating pro-government demonstration during Ashura observance. The protestors are likely to use the February occasion to make a case that the Revolution was hijacked by the Khameini, Ahmadinejad and their paramilitary thugs, who are solely concerned about regime survival and without any regard to the Iranian populace.

The language of the protest movement—the constant chants of “death to dictators” and even damaging the posters bearing the image of Khomeini—is already becoming dangerously anti-Islamic Republic in nature. Still, its chief weakness stems from the fact that it has not yet found an alternate leader. There is no other Khomeini to lead the masses. The late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri was perceived as such a force. However, even while alive, he was too old and frail to lead another revolutionary movement. Mir Hussein Moussavi has been too tainted for his past ties with the Islamic Republic. Besides, he has not shown the kind of risk-taking that made Khomeini such an ominous force in the eyes of the pro-monarchy forces as far back as in the early 1960s. Besides, Moussavi, like the former president Ali Khatami, wants continuity of the Islamic Republic, but with a change in leadership. The social movement might no longer be willing to be satisfied with that kind of a change.

However, the Iranian political milieu is much too fertile to allow a leadership gap for too long. Another leader of the charisma of Khomeini, but one who is armed with radically different ideas, has to emerge soon enough. Otherwise, the social movement will lose its revolutionary spirit. That is how social movements—i.e., those who carry the flames of revolutionary change—operate.

Is there a foreign hand in the internal turbulence in Iran?

As much as the Middle East is famous for its conspiracy theories, one has to wonder whether the United States or other foreign powers are indeed involved in the current protest movement. If history teaches us anything about America’s involvement in that country, one cannot cavalierly or categorically dismiss the possibility of America’s non-involvement in fomenting Iran’s social movement. After all, the democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq was overthrown by a combined operation carried out by the CIA and the British spy service in 1953.

Extrapolating that tradition to contemporary politics, the United States has a lot of reasons to see the demise of the Iranian government. Iran is the only remaining “confrontational” country of the Middle East. In that capacity, it has constantly challenged the strategic dominance of the United States and its proxy, Israel. It has never accepted the proposition that the Arab-Israeli conflict can be resolved peacefully. Iran has backed up its confrontational stance against the U.S. and Israel by regularly supporting the Hamas position of “no negotiations.” In Lebanon, Iran has played a crucial role in thwarting the hegemonic designs of the Menachem Begin-Ariel Sharon axis in the 1980s by creating the Hezbollah as a paramilitary force. That party played a crucial role in the Israeli decision to finally pull out of Lebanon in 2000. That very same Hezbollah has enjoyed a new prestige in the Arab world by challenging Israel in July-August war of 2006 and surviving the intense Israeli air campaign that was aimed at destroying it. Consequently, the political clout of Hezbollah and Iran skyrocketed in the Middle East.

Iran has also played a crucial role in destabilizing Iraq between 2004 and 2008 in order to make sure that the U.S. forces do not decide to stay in that country permanently. Even as Iraq is experiencing political stability in 2010, Iran’s clout in Iraq has remained high, something that is the least welcomed reality for the U.S. occupation authorities.

In addition, by refusing to give up its nuclear research program, the Iranian government has given all the reasons for the United States to think that it aims to develop nuclear weapons. While insisting that it has no intention of developing nuclear weapons, Iran has manifested an attitude of least flexibility. However, neither U.S. nor Israel believes the Iranian assurances.

The United States, on its part, has also maintained a sustained posture of confrontation and vitriolic rhetoric of condemnation of Iran. As far back as during the Iran-Iraq war, the Reagan administration blatantly sided with the regime of Saddam Hussein. The operating rationale for such an approach was Iraq was perceived as a “lesser of the two evils.” Thus, it was the policy of the U.S. government to do all it could to ensure the defeat of Iran in that war, hoping that such a defeat would bring about an end to the Islamic Republic. When that did not happen, the United States remained a leading force of imposing economic sanctions on Iran hoping, once again, that the long-term effects of those sanctions would lead to regime change.

In view of the preceding, it is very hard to accept that the U.S. government may be a totally uninterested or an uninvolved party in the current Iranian political instability. Viewing strictly as an option, it behooves Washington that the current Iranian government is overthrown. That would remove a major thorn from the side of the lone superpower. It would also resolve the issue of Iranian commitment to nuclear research program without a military action. More to the point, Washington can live with the instability stemming in Iran stemming from the overthrow of the government through the apparent activities of a social movement than through a military action taken by a foreign power. The clandestine involvement of the U.S. or any other government can be talked about, but, as long as it cannot be proven, it is not likely to harm the U.S. interests in the Middle East, or so calculate the powers-that-be in Washington.

A potential overthrowing of the Islamic government in Iran provides no guarantee that the succeeding government will be pro-American. America’s prestige in the Middle East has remained all time low in the aftermath of its invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even the most pro-American governments of the Persian Gulf prefer not to show their support of the lone superpower either volubly or frequently. It is bad for the regime stability to be seen as a staunch supporter of the United States in the Persian Gulf region at a time when even the Saudi government is beginning to feel the rising flames ignited by the pro-al-Qaida forces in the neighboring Yemen. The speculations regarding a potential Iranian involvement in Yemen (in support of the Shia forces that are fighting the Saudis) abound. If that is true, then Iran might have found another way to sustain an upper hand over the alleged or potential American shenanigans related to support the social movement to bring about regime change in that country.

What happens if the regime falls?

The best answer to this question can be provided by examining the geographical environment of Iran. Pakistan, Afghanistan—Iran two neighbors—are already places where the Islamist forces are confronting the existing governments and the United States. Consequently, these neighbors of Iran are experiencing different degrees of instability. Two of these—Afghanistan to the East of Iran and Iraq to its West—are also occupied by the United States. That very fact continues to fuel the activities of al-Qaida and its cohorts. Across the Persian Gulf Iran is the Arabian Peninsula where al-Qaida is gathering strength in Yemen. The Islamist insurgency has already spilled over in neighboring Saudi Arabia, where Saudi Arabia, where its forces have intensified the conflict by conducting a number of bombing raids in northern Yemen, areas that is contiguous to Saudi Arabia. The southern part of Yemen is facing the secessionist forces.

Across the Gulf of Aden is the highly unstable Horn of Africa, where Somalia has emerged as the “poster child” of a failed state. Two western neighbors of Somalia, Ethiopia and Eretria, are well on their way of becoming failed states.

Given this gloomy, but a realistic description of Iran’s immediate geographical environment, the last thing the international community wishes to see is the downfall of Iranian government. However, the Middle East is famous (or infamous) for surprising the predictions and expectations of even those who reside in the region. So, one should not be surprised if the government in Iran falls. If that were to happen, the only winner will be al-Qaida and its supporters who have an established record of demonstrating their effectiveness for violence and mayhem under political turbulence and chaos.

What can the regime do to survive?

An obvious answer to this question is that the regime should think about compromising with Moussavi. However, that compromise can only be meaningful if the results of the June 2009 elections are nullified. No one expects that to happen. Besides, Iran is also known for one more brutal tradition: if an existing regime starts to offer concessions to the forces of change, that measure is seen by the opposition as a sign of weakness and a perfect opportunity to ratchet up violence and turbulence with a view to ousting the regime. That was precisely what happened to the regime of Mohammad Reza in the last few months it was in power. Given that reality, the Ali Khameini is not likely to offer any concessions along the lines suggested above. Another option for it to sit tight and show some willingness for reform on its own and hope that such a measure would not create a tsunami for regime change. In fact, Iran seems to have already adopted that option.

In the meantime, the United States and its Western allies would continue to increase pressure on Iran by slapping harsh economic sanctions. Iran’s best hope is that Russia and/or China would come to its rescue. That is a possibility; however, those two countries are also busy studying the situation and calculating how far they should go in supporting Iran’s intransigence related to the conflict with the United States involving its nuclear research program.

By conducting a fraudulent election, the current government in Iran has dealt a very severe blow to its own already shaky legitimacy. If it were to plummet—even with alleged support for the social movement from abroad—it, first and foremost, should blame itself. After all, it has been doing everything to make itself vulnerable to foreign shenanigans and plots for its overthrow.

1. Sidney Tarrow,

Power in Movement: Social Movement, Collective Action, and Politics

, (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
2. James A. Bill,

The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations

(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988)
3. Vali Nasr,

The Shia Revival:
How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future

President Barack Obama decided to show his “outrage,” since some so-called pundits were upset that he was not showing the kind of passion that George W. Bush had shown after the 9/11 attacks. But, Bush’s record in his so-called “war on terrorism” has been a miserable failure. During his regime, the United States became an occupier of two Muslim countries. That might be one reason why the lone superpower under Obama is facing such an uphill battle in dealing with “violent extremism.” If Obama were to follow Bush’s example, then the United States is likely to face future quagmires and inertias.

Another dim-witted statement that was uttered by one of the “pundits” is when he wondered out loud why Muslims are not condemning what the young Nigerian tried to do. Statements of that nature imply that all Muslims, until every one of them yells at the top of his/her lungs condemning such action over and over again, are condoning terrorism. At no time in the history of human kind was such a reckless notion deemed worthy of air time.

What happened to America’s dealing with terrorism is that, under a new president, another country (Afghanistan) became the focus of it, as if by “winning” in that country the current administration would defeat terrorism once and for all. What the United States is not considering is that there cannot be any victory against the terrorist forces unless it develops comprehensive anti-terrorism policies. Firing cruise missiles or using UAVs to shoot a group of terrorists here and there, or sending Special Forces to take out a few terrorists is not the solution. Actions of that nature only intensify feelings of hatred and revenge against U.S. personnel all over the world. If the United States’ invasion of Iraq taught anything to America, it is that the use of military power (“hard” power) alone is no guarantee of victory.

As President Obama is busy developing some sort of blueprint (I will not call it a strategy, because there is no such thing up to this time), Pakistan and Afghanistan look increasingly precarious places. In both those countries, Islamist forces are on the offensive. Iran, totally unrelated to the latest episode of terrorism, is getting increasingly unstable. The Iranophobes in America are eagerly waiting for the Islamic regime to fall, hoping that the next government will be pro-Western. No one is considering that the alternative to the Islamic Republic might be chaos, which might have its own deleterious spillover effects in Iraq.

Across the Persian Gulf, Yemen is boiling over as another failed state. Northern Yemen and areas of Saudi Arabia contiguous to it have become the new battleground between forces of those two countries and al-Qaida, with the United States increasing its pressure on both of those countries to let loose their hard power on them. America’s answer to problems of al-Qaida is: kill, kill, kill, never mind what happens to Yemen or Saudi Arabia in the process. Farther East to the Arabian Peninsula is the Horn of Africa, which contains Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eretria. Somalia is already the poster child candidate for a failed state, while Ethiopia and Eretria are right behind it.

The question of the hour—indeed, of the decade—is what should be done about all these countries that are steadily becoming havens for al-Qaida. Does the United States have enough cruise missiles to shoot at all of them, ensuring the eradication of all supporters of al-Qaida? Does it have enough drones to fly them on a 7/24 basis on all the aforementioned countries?

In the last presidential election, there was no debate about how to win against the terrorists worldwide. Terrorism as an issue had already fallen way down on the list of American voters’ concerns during that presidential campaign. Candidate Obama made his electoral fortune by banging the drum of the failed policies of Bush, and then insisting that he would go after al-Qaida and would do everything to eradicate it in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Who could have argued against that without having his/her patriotism questioned? What bears repeating here is that the 2008 presidential election campaign was totally devoid of any debate regarding how to be victorious over global terrorist forces because, by then, the 9/11 attacks were fading in American memories.

That fading process would have continued if not for the fact that Obama remained true to his promise and started the use of hard power in Afghanistan and Pakistan, assuming that he would win where his predecessor had failed.

The widening popularity of al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula and on the Horn of Africa, and its sustaining capacity in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, should intensify the feeling in the U.S. that the need of the hour is to develop comprehensive anti-terrorism policies, and not to solely rely on killing (counterterrorism emphasis) and hope that such a measure would also eradicate terrorism. But right now, examining the public debate, one gets the feeling that the American government is in the process of reinventing the wheel. There is the usual blame game that various agencies are still not cooperating; or the process of terrorist monitoring has become so cumbersome that it does not work even when a young man’s father reports to the American embassy that his son might have joined the ranks of the terrorists, yet that young man is allowed to travel to the United States.

Watching the process of recrimination, looking for fall guys, the blame game that is currently in progress in Washington, one wonders whether the lone superpower would ever become invulnerable to the actions of those who attach no value to life, neither of their own nor of others.
If there is a fall guy inside the United States in this whole process of countering terrorism, it is the cumbersomeness related to securing America that has become the chief culprit of making America unsafe. The strength of the terrorists stems from the fact that they operate on the basis of simplicity: one person or a few persons specialize in or invent new ways of creating death and mayhem. All they have to do is to find just one or more loopholes in the cumbersome security processes. At least in incidents of this nature, the culprit is the incompetence of the intricate bureaucracies, which promise to become even more intricate and, in all likelihood, more incompetent in the coming months.

The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission of creating an intelligence czar was a wise one. Instead, Congress diluted most of the recommendations of that Commission by playing politics. Today, we have eight or more intelligence agencies. All of them are busy fighting budget and turf battles and performing the redundant tasks of collecting intelligence. Those types of redundancies are also contributing further to the aforementioned cumbersomeness. As the co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission observed in their OpEd of January 11, 2010, “The DNI [Director of National Intelligence] has been hobbled by disputes over its size, mission and authority, but forcing information-sharing and enabling the NCTC’s [National Counterterrorism Center] best analysts to do their work should not be subject to dispute.”

What America needs is an anti-terrorism strategy that is geared toward homeland security, but a strategy that also deals with causes of global terrorism that is focused on Africa, the Middle East, and South, Central, and Southeast Asia. Of these regions, Africa—the Horn and the trans-Sahel region, North and West Africa—is where terrorism is likely to run rampant during the next decade. South Asia and the Middle East will remain hotbeds of terrorism from now until at least the middle of the next decade. Central Asia appears calm; however, we know so little about that region because countries of that area are governed by autocrats who want absolutely no outside scrutiny of their tyrannical rule. So, it is a safe bet that one or more countries of Central Asia is likely to experience internal turbulence or even violent regime change. In all likelihood, such change would not result because of terrorist groups, but such groups are most likely to take every advantage of the resultant political turbulence.

If the prognostications of increased transnational turbulence are correct, then it behooves the United States to have trans-regional strategies to counter such events. Merely appointing “czars” and “special envoys” is not enough. However, considering how unprepared the United States has shown itself to be about dealing with terrorism last December, one has little reason to remain optimistic.

There is one important difference, however. By including a general outline of his exit strategy in his speech, Obama signaled, albeit unwittingly, to the Afghans that his country is not going to hang around in that neighborhood. They long suspected the United States of doing just that.

While the necessity of having an exit strategy may soothe Obama’s democratic base on the left, it only confirms the Afghan doubts about the earnestness of America’s staying power in their country. The Taliban-al-Qaida might have roundly applauded those lines from Obama’s speech.

President Obama’s chief problem in Afghanistan is that there is no winning in that country without permanently occupying it. And all the past occupiers were defeated in attempting to do so. Afghans are legendary in their abilities to unite to fight outsiders, but then turn against each other when they succeed in ousting the foreign occupiers to wage equally bloody battles. No wonder their country has the ominous moniker of “the graveyard of empires.”

His second problem is that there has not been a tradition of a strong central government in that country. So, creating one now is out of the question in the sense that it would take a long time for an occupying force to achieve that goal. Even the achievability of that goal is a highly dubious proposition. An alternative is to create a federal type of government, with strong provinces and a weak center. However, it is difficult to function with that type of arrangement, even in countries with a strong tradition of democracy, a high rate of literacy, and a powerful legacy of political compromise. Those traditions are totally alien to Afghanistan.

The third serious challenge for the Obama administration in Afghanistan is that Islam has a powerful presence there. In the post-Soviet Afghanistan, that Islamic presence became acutely political, with overarching features of Wahhabi Puritanism, militant Jihad, and suicide bombings. Even the old style Afghan politicians-and there are not too many of them left in that country–are befuddled about how to eliminate those characteristics that are so alien to their polity.

The United States has never shown even a slight evidence of having any capabilities of working with Islamist groups anywhere in the world, including in Iraq. George W. Bush was shocked to see the election of Islamists, when elections were held in Iraq in 2005. After that, the Iraqi quagmire left little hope for the United States to stay put and to develop a Western-style democracy. So, as a matter of last resort, it learned to live with Islamist democracy in Iraq, while hoping to extricate itself from that country in the next few years.

President Obama’s speech barely touched on the geopolitical intricacies of the Afghan war, which have made any realistic solution of that problem so elusive. He has decided to work closely with Pakistan, but has said nothing about the Indo-Pak rivalry, which is complicating that conflict. India has a huge supposedly diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, which Pakistan regards as a major challenge to its security. The United States not only has to reexamine that issue closely, but also must do everything to soothe Pakistani anxieties. Unless that happens, Pakistan is not likely to emerge as a serious partner of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Finally, President Obama has shown a lack of interest in nation-building in Afghanistan. Given the enormous expenditures that the United States is faced with in Iraq, and given his noble endeavors to come up with a national healthcare policy in the United States, one can fully understand his refusal to get involved in a mega-billion-dollar commitment of nation-building in Afghanistan. However, that is precisely what that country needs, once political stability starts to emerge there.

Afghanistan will serve as a crucial laboratory for this President to learn how to conduct foreign policy in a highly complex place. It will also become a country where he is not likely to encounter victory. However, the fact that he has decided to commit a large number of forces and to tie the fate of his presidency to stabilization of that country speaks volumes about the audacity of his courage.

I read Roy’s first two books when they first came out.  While reading The Failure of Political Islam, I felt then, as I do now, that Roy’s conclusion about the alleged failure of that movement was premature.  Movements—especially ideological or religious-based ones—have a long duration and a variety of phases through which they pass over a long period of time before a somewhat meaningful—but still premature—judgment can be passed regarding their success or failure.  Social scientists, to the contrary, are like judges in an Olympic competition–too much in a hurry to measure the performance of the participants in order to declare winners and losers.  One of the most interesting studies of the phases of a movement is Crane Brinton’s, The Anatomy of Revolution.[1]  An interesting approach for the study of Roy’s thesis on political Islam is to examine it through an application of Brinton’s framework.

The title of Roy’s book, Globalized Islam, as Professor Hroub also notes, “contradicts…[Olivier’s] own failure thesis” of his previous book.  How can a failed movement become globalized and still be depicted as “failed”?  My own explanation is similar to the one that Hroub touches on, but is elaborately discussed in the Islamist literature under the rubric of fighting the “far enemy” (i.e., the “infidel-in-chief,” meaning the United States) versus the “near enemies” (Arab and Muslim governments) among many Islamist groups.  That debate was settled temporarily between 1999 and 2001.  As a result of which the audacious decision of attacking the lone superpower on its own homeland was taken.  As one tracks the “global” rhetoric of today’s “Jihadists,” one gets the sense that they are driven by the goals of fighting the U.S. as well as destabilizing the “near enemies.”

I lean toward the proposition that al-Qaida and other pan-Islamist groups were shocked about the scope and intensity of the U.S. response, which was also accompanied by George W. Bush’s ominous caveat that was especially aimed at the Arab leaders:  “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”

In the aftermath of America’s global war on terrorism (GWOT), in order to survive, al-Qaida was forced to transform itself into a movement.  There also ensued the decision of regional and sub-regional Islamist groups to develop their own campaigns of terror in agreement with Mus’ab al-Suri’s operational slogan: Nizam la Tanzim.  That, in my estimation, is the beginning of the making of global Jihad.[2]

To argue that there is such a thing called globalized Islam is belaboring the obvious.  “Islamic internationalism” is an old idea.  In today’s parlance, that very idea is repackaged as “globalized Islam.”  The notion of nationalism and citizenship has always been alien to Islam.  The global promotion of that idea, especially starting in the 1990s, was easy because it was very much in harmony with the theological concept that states: “Islam is a religion of all ages.”  The global reach of the Internet has turned out to be a perfect tool for the globalization of a notion that was intrinsically global to start with.

Political Islam’s temporary failure—temporary because, as I stated earlier, it is a premature judgment on the part of Roy—stems from two very important variables.  The first one—as only touched upon by Professor Hroub but not fully developed—is that it has failed to offer nuanced and comprehensive solutions to what ails Muslim polities.  Answers to that question are hard to develop even in a whole book.  Even Bernard Lewis, after asking the right question in his book, What Went Wrong?, desolately failed to provide  persuasive answers.[3]

Secondly, because all Muslim polities are non-democratic, there was no chance of Islamists capturing power through an election.  Even in countries where limited electoral practices existed, elections are characterized by the odious practices of ballot-stuffing by the cronies of the regimes in order to ensure that there should be no transfer of power.  We have recently witnessed this phenomenon in the elections of Iran and Afghanistan.

Islamists have long known that merely shouting, “Islam is the solution!” is never enough.  They needed to develop comprehensive programs of political and economic development.  Muslim theologists failed to become experts in contemporary economics, global trade, international politics, or other contemporary disciplines, largely because they rejected them as “failed” and “godless” disciplines, without offering alternatives.  Even now, I am unaware of any theologist who has offered alternatives.   All countries that explicitly call themselves “Islamic”—Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Sudan, or Iran, for instance—are failed and corrupt polities and are characterized by backward economies.  When a Muslim youngster looks for an “Islamic solution” to problems that ail his/her society, he/she finds an immense vacuum.  So, the failure of those states to emerge as stable polities or strong economies becomes a credible indicator that other Islamist groups would also fail, if or when they capture political power.

But, what are the chances of the Islamists capturing power in any country in the coming years?  With the exception of Hamas, I would say none.  Even Hamas, by remaining intransigent about changing its stance regarding Israel, has condemned itself to failure.  The United States, the EU, and other countries, by denying economic assistance to Palestine, have been serving as leading players in ensuring that Hamas does not succeed as a political entity. 

Most importantly, an unspoken aspect of the Western actors’ systematic attempts to ensure that Hamas fails is also related to their fear that, if Hamas succeeds in stabilizing Palestine, other Islamist groups will be encouraged to capture power and then hang on long enough to become victorious.  However, when Hamas’ rule comes to end in Palestine, that development will not necessarily persuade other Islamist groups to stop their endeavors to capture political power in their own countries.  

I was once of the view that, perhaps, the Islamists should be given a chance to come to power through elections, and be allowed to fail.  However, after watching the performance of Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, I have changed my mind.  In the absence of comprehensive programs to stabilize their polities and to strengthen their economies, their chances of success are none. 

A few words about the Islamic Republic of Iran:  that country could have been an example of the success of an Islamic government; Iran has had a reasonable amount of democracy and ample oil and gas reserves to introduce ambitious programs of modernization;  and the Iranian leaders encountered serious problems from the United States in the 1980s, when the US sided with Iraq in the bloody war between the two neighbors. 

Undoubtedly, the United States wanted Iraq to do America’s dirty work by getting rid of the Ayatollahs through that war.  However, both Washington and Baghdad failed miserably in fulfilling their objective of terminating the Islamic government in Iran.  From Iran’s point of view, it was correct to state that their revolution was not given a chance to succeed. 

The Iranian fraudulent election of last June does not bode well for the Islamic Republic.  Iran seems to be steadily edging toward chaos for which the hardline Islamists of that country are substantially responsible.

What does the continuing saga of the Islamic Republic say about the future of political Islam in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world of Islam?[4]  It has not found its niche as a movement, largely because it has not yet developed a comprehensive framework for governance.  However, the concept of eternity that is related to Islam as a religion is one reason why the Islamists (or political Islamists) will continue to try and fail, but will not stop until they have a successful recipe for governance.  When will they succeed?  An answer to that question is not within the realm of Social Science.

No one can doubt that Kennedy felt he was right in committing the American troops to fight the communists in Vietnam.  One only has to recall the famous lines of his inaugural address of paying any price and facing any foes in fighting for freedom.

By the same token, Obama has frequently described the war in Afghanistan as a war of necessity.  He might not have realized that that is how many presidents and prime ministers got embroiled in wars.  However, the most ignored aspect of such decisions is that it is relatively easy to paint oneself in rhetorical corners of one’s own making.  That was Obama did during the presidential campaign when he regularly chided President George W. Bush for starting the war in Iraq, but stated that the United States should be waging a war in Afghanistan and against al-Qaida and the Taliban. 

Obama is facing a challenge that Kennedy did not encounter, because he did not live to face the consequences of failure.  That challenge is related to the question of what if he failed in Afghanistan.

While there are no silver bullets for winning in Afghanistan, the counterinsurgency strategy that was used in Iraq is considered by the American military leaders as something that comes close to being regarded as ensuring the victory.

Obama is encountering another very hot issue: As President, he must decide whether to insert more troops into Afghanistan as General Stanley McCrystal wants, or deny him forces and condemn himself (Obama) to failure.  If he sends more troops to Afghanistan and faces failure, then future historians would be highly disparaging of him for not standing up to his military adviser, something that Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill famously did and, thus, became archetypes of what “great leaders” should do. 

If he inserts more troops into Afghanistan and postpones defeat, then the judgment on his leadership will be convoluted and contentious.  In this context, we hear that President Obama and his advisers are reading Gordon Goldstein’s book, Lessons in Disaster, which deals with Kennedy’s national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy’s role in the Vietnam War.

However, the trouble with books of history is that they will tell you everything about the past successes and failures.  However, they invariably leave the reader—in this instance, President Obama—to decide for himself what decision he should make regarding a crisis at hand.  Another important reality is that no two historical events or crises are exactly the same, no matter how similar those events appear to be.

Obama is doing everything he can before making up his mind about accepting or not accepting General McCrystal’s recommendation for more troops.  He is well-advised in not attaching much importance to where the top military brass stands on this issue.  They have no superior insight on this issue.  They were wrong during the Vietnam conflict, and the odds are high that they might be wrong in the Afghan conflict.  Obama is reportedly reading books on Vietnam, discussing what went right and wrong in the United States’ latest embroilment in Iraq, is having open discussions with his aids. 

However, in the final analysis, he must remember two advices that come from two different sources.  The first one comes from Collin Powell when he was the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He did not want to commit the American troops in any conflicts for which there was no support from the American public.  More to the point, he advised future presidents for the necessity of having an “exit strategy” before committing the U.S. forces. 

The second source of advice for President Obama is what McGeorge Bundy told Goldstein:  “Never Trust the Bureaucracy to Get It Right” [and] “Never Deploy Military Means in Pursuit of Indeterminate Ends.”  That second half of the preceding statement is precisely what Powell has stated in his insistence on having an “exit strategy.”