By Dr. Nayyer Ali

Reshaping the Middle East - Part Two

January 05, 2007

Throughout the last four years there has been insufficient security and reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The overwhelming need to establish security early and maintain it was ignored, and that is why we have the catastrophe we face today. In Afghanistan, a few billion dollars annually would have been sufficient to buy and destroy the poppy crop, which fuels much of the instability. In Iraq, the lack of security has inexorably allowed the situation to go from bad to worse to beyond that. Baghdad is now dividing into armed neighborhood camps, and ethnic cleansing is gathering pace.
This is not to say that greater democracy is a bad thing. I too would like to see the spread of democracy. But it must be done through peaceful and evolutionary change, not through imposed revolutions by outsiders lacking the knowledge, interest, or resources to make it work. Otherwise, we end up far worse off than before.
In fact, the Muslim world is making good progress on its own. There are four basic forms of government now present. First, we have a number of large, successful Muslim democracies, including Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Between them you can find 40% of the world’s Muslims, another 10% live in democratic India. A second group of countries have autocratic systems, but relatively open societies, and the governments are generally reasonably effective and engaged in modernizing and liberalizing their societies. I would include Pakistan, Jordan, Tunisia, some of the Gulf states, and Morocco in this group. Egypt may or may not belong. Third, there are the oligarchic states that are run for the benefit of a ruling elite, while the rest of society is badly repressed. This would include Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, Algeria, Saddam’s Iraq, perhaps Egypt, and the Central Asian republics. Many of these are either oil states, or heavily socialized economies with government dividing up the pie to its own benefit, while providing just enough to the people to limit opposition. Oil is in fact a plague, and without it, many of the ills of the Muslim world would have been greatly reduced. Despite over five trillion dollars sent from Europe, the US, and Japan to the oil-producers over the last 35 years, no major Muslim country, or non-Muslim country for that matter, has actually developed a modern economy on the back of oil. Instead, oil distorts domestic politics, cripples the development of the modern non-oil sector, prevents the emergence of democracy, and creates vast incentives for outsiders to seek influence for their own benefit. Finally, there are the true Islamic ideological states such as Iran and the Taliban regime, and the Islamist regime in Sudan in the 1990’s. The main point about these is that there are very few of them, they are notably unsuccessful, and have not been able to generate or maintain the support of their own people. The Iranian regime holds power because of its control of the oil wealth. This notion that there is a powerful force of Islamists waiting to overrun the planet is just not true. In Pakistan for example, the latest opinion polls show them to have 7% of the public.
So what should Bush have done if he wanted to reduce the democracy deficit? Instead of this war, he should have focused on strengthening the existing Muslim democracies, encouraging those nations that are autocratic but modernizing to further liberalize and gradually transition to democracy, and to have pushed our oligarchic allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt to gradually open up their societies. A strategy that focused on the unique circumstances of each country, and used American soft-power judiciously, would have a much greater impact than the Iraq adventure did.
Into this current mess stepped the Baker Hamilton report, which is the bipartisan committee created by Congress to look at Iraq strategy. It is meant to give the President a way forward that allows the US some semblance of a reasonable outcome in Iraq. The report makes 79 recommendations, and I certainly will not go through all of them. However, they can be divided into items that deal with Iraq specifically, and then more regional diplomatic recommendations.
With respect to Iraq itself, although they mean well, the report is basically too little, too late. At this point the forces needed to really re-establish order and build real national institutions is beyond the political capacity of the United States. By that I mean a real draft and sending 500,000 soldiers. The current Army is simply too small to do this. Iraq has functionally broken into three pieces, with the edges consumed by war. There are no national institutions, and the army and police are hopelessly infiltrated by militias. Another 20,000 US soldiers wont change that. In addition, the allies are leaving, and no one is taking their place.
The problem is that the genie has been released. It takes far less effort to keep a neighborhood from forming a militia than it does to make a militia disarm. It takes less effort to maintain a secure Baghdad than to create security in the midst of mayhem. It takes less effort to prevent someone from joining the insurgency than it does to make him quit. It takes less effort to get Iraqis to work together when they don’t hate and fear each other than it does when they do. It takes less effort to create an equitable sharing of the oil revenue than it does to impose it once regional groups have staked a claim. It takes less effort to reconcile groups who have not seen their loved ones murdered or tortured, than it does when that has happened on a massive scale. It takes much less effort to keep a doctor or engineer in Iraq than it does to convince one who has fled to Damascus to come back. America has enough force to keep a lid on things, but not enough to truly fix the country.
On the regional diplomatic front the Baker Hamilton report makes some good points. In particular, it states:
Iraq cannot be addressed effectively in isolation from other major regional issues, interests, and unresolved conflicts. To put it simply, all key issues in the Middle East — the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq, Iran, the need for political and economic reforms, and extremism and terrorism — are inextricably linked. In addition to supporting stability in Iraq, a comprehensive diplomatic offensive — the New Diplomatic Offensive — should address these key regional issues. By doing so, it would help marginalize extremists and terrorists, promote US values and interests, and improve America’s global image.
There is a lot of good sense here on a regional level. Certainly solving many of the conflicts would improve the situation generally. But it is far from clear that solving the Palestinian issue or resolving the nuclear dispute with Iran will substantively change the dynamic in Iraq. But it may help in keeping the Iraqi civil war from being transformed into a proxy regional war between Iran on one side and Saudi Arabia and Egypt on the other. And creating a real Palestinian state would do wonders for lowering the temperature throughout the region.
Despite the pessimism over the Iraq situation and Bush’s attempt to reshape the Middle East, I still find tremendous reasons for optimism. The fact is that over 50% of the world’s Muslims live in democracies, and another 20-30% are in societies that are clearly trending toward real democracy in the next 10-20 years. Women’s rights are rapidly improving, whether in Pakistan where the horrible rape laws have finally been repealed, and where a woman runs the central bank, or in Iran where the majority of university students are women, or in Afghanistan, where millions of girls now are going to school, or in the four major Muslim countries that have elected women as Prime Minister in the last 10 years.
In the Middle East, far from calling for perpetual war with Israel, the entire Arab League has offered full peace and normal relations in exchange for Israel returning to the 1967 borders. Muslim minorities throughout the West are successfully integrating, albeit more slowly and with greater difficulty in Europe. In America, Muslims have higher incomes and levels of education than the national average. One in 30 American physicians is a Muslim. Throughout the Muslim world there are strong progressive voices that are gathering steam, whether in Egypt or Iran or Pakistan. Civil society is playing a stronger and stronger role. Muslims are not trying to conquer the world. In fact, 50 years ago, except for the Turks and Saudis, all Muslims lived in European colonies. Muslims primarily want respect and equality, and that is the world we need to create.
The answer for all of us is justice. We must create a world of justice. A world in which there is justice for an Imam in America, and justice for a Jew in Iran, justice for Muslims in India and for Hindus in Bangladesh, for Muslims in Chechnya and Palestine and Kashmir, and for Christians in Indonesia and Copts in Egypt and Armenians in Turkey and Buddhists in Malaysia. We cannot ask America to treat us fairly, and not hold Muslim countries to the same standard of treatment for non-Muslims. Justice is the highest value in the Qur’an. Nothing is legitimate unless it promotes justice. Bush’s reshaping of the Middle East is not the answer, justice is the answer.

PREVIOUSLY

Deflating Japan

Bush’s Axis of Evil

Speaking to Non-Muslims

If Arafat Were Jinnah

The Shape of Things to Come

South Asia Expert Calls for Negotiations on Kashmir

Kashmir After the Cold War

Kashmir Quagmire: How It Started

Kashmir: Where We’ve Been

Make Way for the Euro

Will there Be a Muslim Palestine?

Careful, Careful

Our Growing Community

Pakistan’s Golden Opportunity

Musharraf’s Reform Plans

Pakistan’s Afghan Dilemma

Humanity on the Move

Strategies of America, Pakistan and Benazir

Winners and Losers

America’s Strategy Defang the Fundamentalists

The Noose Tightens

Pakistan in America

Musharraf’s Moment

A Sad Day for America, A Sad Day for Islam

Repeal the Blasphemy Law

Bush’s Stem Cell Compromise

The Depressing Stock Market

An Evening on Human Development

“Benazir” Takes Over in Indonesia

Race Riots in Britain

Global Warming or Just Hot Air?

Milosevic on Trial

Russia’s Collapse

Economic Recovery in Pakistan?

President Khatami’s Re-election

Lifting Sanctions on Pakistan

Israel’s Moral Burden

A Break in the Logjam?

The Second American Century

Pakistan’s Constitution

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Bush Attacks

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Free Elections in 2007

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Big Successes in Privatization

Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions

Global Warming

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The Iraq War

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Buffett and His Billions

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How Poor is Poor?

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The Pope’s Speech

Democrats Win!

The Republicans Lick Their Wounds

Finally, Some Enlightened Moderation

The Error in the War on Terror

Economic Challenges for Pakistan

Reshaping the Middle East - Part 1

Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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