by Eric Martin
Fareed Zakaria uses the recent accommodation between the Pakistani government and militants in the Swat Valley in Pakistan as a launching point to discuss the proper posture for the United States to adopt vis-a-vis Islamist movements of various stripes. The short version: it is vital that we differentiate between al-Qaeda type groups and other Islamist groups that do not subscribe to theories of global jihad (and that we learn to live with the latter).
Such realignment doesn't mean that we have to turn a blind eye to crimes against women and other brutal and oppressive policies that certain of the Islamist groups might espouse. But those issues are better addressed through non-violent means. After all, even targeted airstrikes end up killing the women and children that they are, ostensibly, meant to safeguard under such humanitarian justifications.
(Side note: These issues were discussed during this past Sunday's installment of Zakaria's CNN show - GPS - which I have enjoyed immensely. Watching Hitchens get put in his place in the most recent episode is, alone, worth the price of admission):
Pakistan's Swat Valley...became a war zone over the past two years as Taliban fighters waged fierce battles against the Pakistani army. The fighting ceased because the Pakistani government has agreed to some of the militants' key demands, chiefly that Islamic courts be established in the region. Fears abound that this means girls schools will be destroyed, movies will be banned and public beheadings will become a regular occurrence.
The militants are bad people, and this is bad news. But the more difficult question is, what should we -- the outside world -- do? How exactly should we oppose these forces? In Pakistan and Afghanistan, we have done so in large measure by attacking them -- directly with Western troops and Predator strikes, and indirectly in alliance with Pakistani and Afghan forces. Is the answer to pour in more of our troops, train more Afghan soldiers, ask the Pakistani military to deploy more battalions, and expand the Predator program to hit more of the bad guys? Perhaps -- in some cases, emphatically yes -- but I think it's also worth stepping back and trying to understand the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism. [...]
The militants who were battling the [Pakistani] army...have had to go along with the deal. The Pakistani government is hoping that this agreement will isolate the jihadists and win the public back to its side. This may not work, but at least it represents an effort to divide the camps of the Islamists between those who are violent and those who are merely extreme.
Over the past eight years, such distinctions have tended to be regarded as naive. The Bush administration spent its first term engaged in a largely abstract, theoretical conversation about radical Islam as a monolithic global ideology -- and conservative intellectuals still spout this kind of unyielding rhetoric. By the second term, though, Bush officials ended up pursuing a most sophisticated policy toward political Islam in the one country where reality was unavoidable -- Iraq.
Having invaded Iraq, the Americans searched for local allies, in particular political groups that could become the Iraqi face of the occupation. The administration came to recognize that 30 years of the secular tyrant Saddam Hussein had left only hard-core Islamists as the opposition. It partnered with these groups, most of which were Shiite parties founded on the model of Iran's ultra-religious organizations, and acquiesced as they took over most of southern Iraq, the Shiite heartland. The strict version of Islam that they implemented in this area was quite similar to -- in some cases more extreme than -- what one would find in Iran today. Liquor was banned; women had to cover themselves from head to toe; Christians were persecuted; religious affiliations became the only way to get a government job, including college professorships. While some of this puritanism is mellowing, southern Iraq remains a dark place. But it is not a hotbed of jihadist activity. The veil is not the same as the suicide belt.
The Bush administration partnered with fundamentalists once more in the Iraq war. When the fighting was at its worst, administration officials began talking to some in the Sunni community who were involved in the insurgency. Many of them were classic Islamic militants, though others were simply former Baathists or tribal chiefs. Gen. David Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy ramped up this process. "We won the war in Iraq chiefly because we separated the local militants from the global jihadists," says Fawaz Gerges, a scholar at Sarah Lawrence College, who has interviewed hundreds of Muslim militants. "Yet around the world we are still unwilling to make the distinction between these two groups."
Anything that emphasizes the variety of groups, movements and motives within that world strengthens the case that this is not a battle between Islam and the West. In the end, time is on our side. Wherever radical Islam is tried, people weary of its charms quickly. All Islamists, violent or not, lack answers to today's problems. Unlike them, we have a worldview that can satisfy the aspirations of modern men and women. That's the most powerful weapon of all.
This is classic "disaggregation" strategy (a counterinsurgency tool promoted by such well-respected practitioners as David Kilcullen) whereby each group within a given movement is treated as a distinct entity so as to determine how to best respond to each (discussed here and, more recently, here). This analytical device can shed light on which groups can be coaxed to buy-in to a given government structure, and which groups can only be dealt with through the application of force.
Disaggregation offered the only viable means available to us for stabilizing the situation in Iraq (not the surge of troops, as is commonly misinterpreted). We weren't going to be able to keep fighting all militant groups, nor would the Iraqi government be able to persist for long without a broader support in the population at large. By working with various Iraqi Islamist and/or insurgent groups, the US has helped create an imperfect and tenuous momentum in the direction of stability.
Similarly, disaggregation offers a glimmer of hope going forward in Afghanistan. As my friend Steve Hynd points out, the "Taliban" is a multifaceted movement with its constituent parts often working at cross purposes on important issues such as hostility to the Pakistani government and support for global jihadism. We need to do our best to peel away those factions that are not committed to furthering al-Qaeda's cause and provide them with enough incentives to participate in the new Afghan government. Even groups that we might rightly label as "Taliban."
Those incentives can be provided in two ways, broadly speaking: positive inducement and negative inducement. That is where I see the Obama administration heading with its announced troops build-up in Afghanistan (and where the Surge helped in Iraq to some extent): it is part of an effort to change the calculus of certain groups that have gravitated toward the hardcore Taliban largely out of an appreciation for which way the wind is blowing. We want to woo them back and offer greater protection to rural populations, and in order to do so, we may need to flex some military muscle. Any such military efforts would need to be combined with offers of material support and other accommodation in terms of religious sensibilities as a means to cement allegiance.
This process will, necessarily, include courting Islamist groups that have some repugnant beliefs and practices from a human rights perspective. But we cannot defeat the entirety of the Afghan insurgencymilitarily at acceptable costs, nor prop up an Afghan government in the face of such widespread resistance.
Even still, it is unclear if such a strategy will work. With respect to Iraq, the fear is that erstwhile combatants are only maintaining a cease-fire with the US forces in order to capitalize on our largess, and to avoid the considerable losses incurred when confronting the vastly superior US military in combat. There is a concern that these groups are merely refurbishing, refitting and biding their time for the day when they can challenge the current government after US troops withdraw. Further, there are questions as to the extent of the current government's willingness to offer incentives to former insurgent groups post-US withdrawal.
Similarly, any relative stability in Afghanistan, if achieved (which would necessitate cooperation from Afghanistan's neighbors), would be fragile to say the least - and given the Karzai government bad reputation for corruption and fecklessness, perhaps it is a lost cause.
But we simply can't afford to stay in either place much longer, let alone for the decades that the counterinsurgency gurus advise. And our prolonged presence has its own radicalizing and counterproductive effects. Our last best hope in each theater is to accommodate as many groups as possible. In so doing, we can attempt to tamp down the violence and hope that the exhaustion with fighting and the allure of normalcy can create an irresistible inertia of its own - leading to more willingness for compromise and concession on all sides, the steady abandonment of violence and a growing lack of tolerance for those that utilize such means.
lest we forget, the Taliban itself was willing to turn over bin Laden to an Islamic court for the crimes committed in the name of Islam on 9/11 (and claimed to be willing to turn him over to the US if we provided proof of bin Laden's culpability in 9/11).
_
most people don't realize that bin Laden was considered an apostate -- by declaring jihad (and acting on that declaration) without the clerical authority to do so, he was spitting on centuries of perogatives that were enjoyed only by those who had gone through extremely rigorous religious training, and had risen in the clerical ranks. Taliban resistance to Bush's demands that bin Laden be turned over had almost nothing to do with support for bin Laden's actions, and everything to do with the fact that the US does not abide by Islamic laws, and 9/11 represented a crime against Islam that outweighed even the crime against humanity that 9/11 represented.
Posted by: paul lukasiak | March 02, 2009 at 07:27 PM
Those odious Islamist factions in Afghanistan with whom we must make some sort of accommodation probably includes factions currently within the Taliban.
My own guess is that the current Afghans in government would do this anyway -- it seems to be the Afghan way to make expedient power sharing arrangements with almost anyone. It seems to be an aspect of a country organized along local tribal lines.
Sadly, the long term future for Afghanistan seems to a nation dominated by drug warlords, so long as only opium rather than terrorism is the country's export.
Posted by: dmbeaster | March 02, 2009 at 08:02 PM
So this Swat Valley in Pakistan...does it have a Sultan?
Posted by: Dr. Psycho | March 02, 2009 at 10:11 PM
Dis-aggregation now, and disaggregation foh-evuh.
...No, no, this all makes sense. If we had already disaggregated Mullah Omar's head from his shoulders I'd consider it a good time mutually disengage from the Taliban.
...Another disaggregation opportunity occurs to me, the Obama administration could decide to treat to the Somali Islamic Courts faction as if they have nothing to do with a global movement, and emphasize that he had nothing to do with the previous U.S. administration's decision to back an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.
Of course the biggest victory over the long run would be if political Islam could disaggregate its approach to the "other". It's most violent adherents "aggregate" as many catgories of people they dislike (from "the west" to "apostate regimes") into a whole, and decide to hold each accountable for the sins of the other. Would be nice if that changed, eh?
Posted by: spockamok | March 02, 2009 at 10:37 PM
Man I am experiencing some pretty radical cognitive disaggregation right about now. Where is the evidence that any such thing was successful in Iraq? And what's the difference between disaggregation and arming the Taliban & Bin Laden against the Soviets in the early 80's, and how that ended up for us?
Posted by: Guest | March 02, 2009 at 11:35 PM
Here is a shocker for we Americans: everybody in the world doesn't value the same things we value.
Bends your mind, doesn't it?
I'm guessing there is some middle ground available between "approve of every aspect of other societies" and "go to war".
We won the war in Iraq
I have no idea what Petraeus means when he says that.
Posted by: russell | March 03, 2009 at 12:44 AM
The short version: it is vital that we differentiate between al-Qaeda type groups and other Islamist groups that do not subscribe to theories of global jihad (and that we learn to live with the latter).
There is an alternate short version: religion is a cancer; it has more and less dangerous varieties; some of them can be managed while some of them must be excised; but none of them can be safely left untreated.
If "leave us alone to keep our own women subjugated and our own children ignorant" were the only price demanded by 'the Taliban' for their rejection of 'al Qaida', it might be a good short-term bargain. I worry that's not the entire price.
If the Swat Valley were as disinterested in contact with the outside world as the Valley of the Blue Moon in Lost Horizon was; if the Taliban were as isolationist as the lamas of Shangri-La; if their brand of Sharia were an encapsulated tumor, in other words; then benign neglect might be just the right prescription. If.
Contrast the Amish with the Taliban. Both wish to live by the tenets of their faith, in their own enclaves. But I never heard the Amish demand that other people, far way must submit to their religious prohibitions, as Pakistani Muslims did in the Danish cartoons case. The Amish shun the outer world; they do not move to NYC and demand respect for their ways when they get there. They do not look through Danish newspapers to find insults to their prophet. Can the same be said of devout Muslims who live in the Swat valley?
'The Taliban' may have purely local interests, but they ground their claims to earthly power in a universal religion. They do not consider the god of Abraham to be a local deity any more than Jews or Christians do. (So I hear; I've never met any Muslim fundamentalists, and only a few Christian and Jewish ones.) How long before they decide that the Swat Valley is too small a dominion for so universal a god?
What's 'vital' is getting rid of the cancer eventually. Confining the tumor to an isolated spot is a stopgap measure. Let's not lose sight of that.
--TP
Posted by: Tony P. | March 03, 2009 at 01:39 AM
it seems to be the Afghan way to make expedient power sharing arrangements with almost anyone.
Actually, it seems to be also the American way. After all, both ACLU and NRA coexist in the USA, both wielding considerable political power. :-)
How long before they decide that the Swat Valley is too small a dominion for so universal a god?
It doesn't matter. If we believe in what we are, we can be confident that the Western values will have a much greater allure for the people outside the Pakistani tribal areas. In fact, it's even better to have a few hillbillies in isolated valleys to try out Islamic governance. This way, the Pakistani people can see that Islamism does not work in practice. After a decade or two, they find some new form of radicalism to channel their social malcontent to.
Posted by: Lurker | March 03, 2009 at 02:40 AM
If we believe in what we are, we can be confident that the Western values will have a much greater allure for the people outside the Pakistani tribal areas.
Why does the 'allure of Western values' come into it? Are we trying to turn south Asia into Europe, or the United States?
Is it impossible for the people who live in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else to develop indigenous social and political traditions that are responsive, transparent, and just?
Posted by: russell | March 03, 2009 at 08:23 AM
Where is the evidence that any such thing was successful in Iraq?
If you compare the levels of violence in and around Anbar province before and after the Awakenings outreach - and throughout the country for that matter - the differences are stark.
If you compare the level of Sunni participation in elections before and after that strategy, the differences are also stark.
Posted by: Eric Martin | March 03, 2009 at 09:59 AM
Why does the 'allure of Western values' come into it? Are we trying to turn south Asia into Europe, or the United States?
Is it impossible for the people who live in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else to develop indigenous social and political traditions that are responsive, transparent, and just?
The historical record would suggest that yes, it is impossible. The people of those countries could benefit from adopting some Western values.
Posted by: ThirdGorchBro | March 03, 2009 at 11:28 AM
Insomuch as respect for human rights - which most definitely includes womens' rights - is considered a "Western value", then I doubt there could be justice without some adoption of same.
Posted by: Eric Martin | March 03, 2009 at 11:39 AM
russel: Is it impossible for the people who live in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else to develop indigenous social and political traditions that are responsive, transparent, and just?
So long as the US and other major powers lend their support to local forces determined to crush any indigenous social and political movements that wish to develop traditions that are responsive, transparent, and just, yes: it is impossible.
For Afghanistan, remember: The US in 1978/1979 opted to support the Taliban and other extremist Islamists, because the nascent social and political movements towards equal rights for all identified as Communist. And the only organized opposition to the Afghan Communists, who believed in educating women and doing away with fathers trading daughters for marriage, and equal sharing of land to peasant farmers, was the Islamists. So, the US weighed in with all their might against these Communist values... and many women who believed with all their heart that they had a right to be educated got killed by US-funded, US-trained terrorists.
So, yes, Russell: unless the superpowers of the world are willing to put human rights before all other political values, it is impossible for the grassroots in these countries to support human rights without soon finding themselves outgunned.
Posted by: Jesurgislac | March 03, 2009 at 12:19 PM
Insomuch as respect for human rights - which most definitely includes womens' rights - is considered a "Western value", then I doubt there could be justice without some adoption of same.
I hear what you're saying. What I want to say in response is that the west's claim to the moral high ground is kind of thin ice.
Pretty much all human cultures, religions, traditions, what have you, have elements of social justice and equality. Islam, for one example, is no exception.
What do we want in south Asia? What's the goal there?
Or, a better question would be: what would a good outcome in south Asia look like? We don't actually live there, perhaps what we want is not the highest priority.
My personal thought here is that we would do better to recognize and encourage traditions and movements that value social justice which are also rooted in the indigenous culture and traditions of south Asia, rather than try to impart western values to them.
They aren't western people.
And we have our own mixed history in the areas of human rights and social justice.
Posted by: russell | March 03, 2009 at 10:19 PM
"For Afghanistan, remember: The US in 1978/1979 opted to support the Taliban"
This is just wrong (and we've been 'round this before, too). The Taliban didn't exist until approximately 1994. I don't even feel the need to give a link to support this, since any site you check on the Taliban will confirm this.
"Islamists" =/ "Taliban."
Posted by: Gary Farber | March 03, 2009 at 11:08 PM
Russell:
Obviously I don't disagree, since I've been writing for some time that we have to strike a deal with Taliban elements - and other non-jihadist Islamists.
And, of course, I harbor no illusions about Western lapses in terms of human rights.
That's why I said to the extent human rights is considered a Western value, then yes, justice requires some adoption thereof.
But I'm less interested in cheerleading for Western values per se, than I am in seeing human rights secured via any plausible delivery system (though not imposed by us from the outside). If indigenous, all the better as it obviates the outside-interference problems.
Posted by: Eric Martin | March 04, 2009 at 09:58 AM