Tag: Islam

Norway terror echoes clash of civilizations

THOMAS HEGGHAMMER, a Norwegian terrorism specialist, says Anders Behring Breivik is no different from Osama bin Laden, and he describes Breivik’s carnage in Oslo and Utoya Island as “an attempt to mirror Al Qaeda.”

I agree. I would add that both 9/11 and the Norwegian tragedy are part of the fallout of the latest “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West.

There has been continual clashes between the Islamic and Western civilizations, states and empires during the past 14 centuries. But each phase of their antagonism — while unleashing spasms of terror, death and destruction — has also produced salutary social and cultural renewal.

During the 7^th-17th centuries, Muslim armies conquered Christian kingdoms and empires in the Levant, North Africa, the Asia Minor and southeastern Europe and built in Spain the most advanced civilization of the time.  Islamic conquest of Christian lands, painful as it was to Christian Europe, had its rewards. The spectacular intellectual flowering in the Abbasid and Moorish empires (A.D. 711-1492) — noted Henri Pirenne, Bernard Lewis and other historians — spurred the pursuit of learning among the mostly backward and poor Europeans.  Muslim intellectuals had been feasting on the Greek philosophical tradition, banished from Europe by the Byzantines.  They now transmitted the Greek rationalist philosophy back to Europe, helping enkindle the European Renaissance.

All the same, Muslim military and cultural thrust into Europe shocked the Christian continent and spurred its military and cultural counter-attack on Muslim countries, marking a high watermark of the clash of civilizations. The European military thrust  culminated in the European colonization of the Muslim world, lasting 300 years.  Now, as though replaying the European reaction to the earlier Islamic hegemony over parts of Europe, Muslims societies rose up to roll back European colonialism. And by the third quarter of the 20th century, Islamic anti-colonial jihad liberated  the entire Islamic civilization from European colonial subjugation.

A byproduct of the European colonialism and post-colonial interaction between the two civilizations has been the enrichment of Muslim societies through the cultivation of  Western values of liberty, freedom and democracy. The Arab Spring, a watershed in the renewal of the Islamic civilization, owes much to Islam’s encounter with the West.

For a few post-colonial decades, it seemed that the clash of the two civilizations had come to an end, at least for a while.  Unfortunately, it appears to have  resumed, mainly because of  U.S. and Israeli aggression against, and occupation of, Muslim lands, and the continued Western hegemony over much of the Muslim world. This  has fueled widespread Muslim rage  and violence against America and the West. This latest clash of civilizations between the two historic, hegemonic contestants is unlikely to diminish much until the U.S., Israeli and European hegemony over Muslim societies is rolled back.

A salutary impact of this round of conflicts has been the rejuvenation of the Islamic campaign for political and cultural reassertion. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, and the U.S. drone attacks and covert operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere in the Muslim world have bolstered the global Muslim solidarity and Muslim interest in Islamic cultural symbols and social values.

• Mustafa Malik hosts the blog Islam and the West.

U.S. policy smothers Pakistani freedom

By Mustafa Malik

WHILE THE PAKISTAN ARMY reels from public outcry over it highhandedness toward the press and public, a bribery scandal involving top generals has brought the army under international scrutiny.

Would this help bring the generals under civilian control and secure freedom and democracy in Pakistan, continually disrupted by military coups? Would the United States help that process by renouncing its traditional support for coup mongers in the Pakistan army?

The Washington Post, the Reuters news agency and other Western media organizations have put out a story about North Korea paying more than $3 million in bribes to top Pakistan army generals to obtain nuclear weapons technology from that country. The report is based on the publication of a North Korean letter to the “father of the Pakistani bomb,” Abdul Qadeer Khan, who claims to have served as the conduit for the bribe. Pakistan has confirmed the transfer of centrifuges and sophisticated drawings to North Korea but denies the bribery report.

Ever since the mid-1950s when the United States and Britain prodded Pakistan into the anti-Communist alliance then known as the Baghdad Pact, the Pakistan army has been serving on the front lines of America’s wars against its enemies in that region. At the behest of the Carter and Reagan administrations, the Pakistan army directed and facilitated the decade-long guerrilla war that rolled back the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  The Pakistan army has now spent another decade fighting America’s “war on terror” against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Unlike the armed forces of other Muslim countries such as Turkey and Algeria, those from what became Pakistan loyally served foreign colonial power, the British, while politicians and the public fought for national independence. Once politicians created nation, the Pakistan army became busy overthrowing one democratic government after another and establishing dictatorships.  While democracy flourishes in neighboring India, military adventurism has kept it from maturing in Pakistan. Unfortunately, the United States and Britain have coddled each of the four Pakistan army dictators, obviously as a payback for their support for Western strategic interests.

Times have changed, however.  The current generation of Pakistanis seems fed up with the corruption, swagger and lust for political power among the Pakistan army leadership.  Pakistani youth, along with news media, are vociferously demanding the army’s accountability, an unprecedented development in Pakistan.  Part of their ire against the military stems from its participation in the U.S. “war on terror,” which has cost the lives of 35,000 civilians and 5,000 army troops in Pakistan.  Polls have shown that more than 80 percent of Pakistanis, and the anti-terror campaign is a main source of their anti-Americanism.

Continued U.S. reliance on corrupt generals — and politicians — to promote U.S. foreign policy goals in the region would further inflame Pakistani public opinion.  And that wouldn’t work any longer.  The Pakistan army can no longer deliver Pakistan to America and the West. Open criticism of U.S. policy by traditionally pro-American Pakistani generals shows that they can no longer defy the public opinion to act on American bidding, as it has done for decades.

The Obama administration should be doing business primarily with Pakistan’s democratic government, renouncing its decades-old policy of bypassing civilian authorities to deal with the military.  That would facilitate civilian control of the military, a necessary step to promote democracy in and douse anti-Americanism in Pakistan.

• Mustafa Malik is the host of the blog Beyond Freedom: https://beyond-freedom.com.

26 hours in Pakistani torture chamber

By Mustafa Malik

(Published in the Daily Star, Lebanon, June 10; Islam and the West, June 10; and the  Asia Times, Hong Kong, June 6, 2011)

I’M SADDENED but not surprised by news of the slaying of Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shehzad. He didn’t have an American passport or other credentials that apparently had enabled me to come out in one piece from a dungeon run by Pakistani intelligence.

Shehzad’s “killing bears all the hallmarks of previous killings perpetrated by Pakistani intelligence agencies,” says Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan representative for Human Rights Watch.  The Asia Times correspondent had antagonized Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate by exposing the Pakistani navy’s links to militant groups.  Dedicated to his profession, he had defied the ISI’s warnings against digging too deep into military matters.

I have known about the travails of numerous other journalists, including myself, who incurred the wrath of Pakistani  intelligence and military services; the lines between the military and intelligence are blurred. On Aug. 21, 1989, I was interviewing retired Pakistani army general Khalid Mahmud Arif at the Rawalpindi offices of then army chief of staff Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg.  I was on a research trip to Pakistan. I told the general that I had heard complaints from Pakistani politicians about Pakistan’s huge military budget, 36.7 percent of the total national budget outlays the previous year. And I inquired if it wasn’t time to seek peace with India against which “Pakistan can’t expect to prevail” in any armed conflict.

Visibly angry, Arif asked what made me think “Pakistan can’t prevail” in a war with India.  I reminded him that the Pakistan army had lost all their three earlier wars with the Indians, and that in the 1971 conflict 93,000 Pakistani soldiers had been taken prisoners to India. Were the continual Pakistan army coups d’etat, I inquired, affecting its morale and professionalism? I would learn later that my interviewee had been deeply involved in the military coup led by the late Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq.

His eyes blazing in rage, the general ambushed me with a series of rapid-fire personal questions including one about whether I was a practicing Muslim.  When I refused to answer some of them and wanted to leave, he ordered me to “wait” and left the room. Two armed guards prevented me from getting out. About 20 minutes later three plain-clothes men barged in; arrested, handcuffed and blindfolded me; placed a hood on my head; and drove me off to an unknown location. In a basement room with spooky images on the wall and smudges of dry blood (or perhaps red dye) on the floor, I was interrogated by two angry men. I realized it was a Pakistani intelligence torture chamber. Sporting wooden staffs, they harangued me about the quality of my upbringing as a Muslim, any links I could have with Indian intelligence, the reason for my “snooping” in Pakistan’s army headquarters, and so on.

During six years I had worked as a journalist in Pakistan, I had known how the Pakistani  intelligence and military harassed, tortured and killed journalists. Now desperate to calm down Arif’s demons, I hastened to tell them that I had served as press secretary and speechwriter for their late Prime Minister Nurul Amin; that I was scheduled to interview then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto three days later; and that I was an American citizen and wanted to contact the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. The interrogation gradually became more civil, even though I had to wait for long hours before being released.

The U.S. Embassy vice consul Michael Gaye investigated the incident and told me Sept. 9, 1989, that my 26-hour ordeal had occurred at the hands of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence service. He promised to get back to me with his follow-up action but never did.

I wasn’t surprised. The United States traditionally ignored the Pakistani armed forces’ brutality to journalists and others and, of course, their recurrent coups against democratic governments. America needed their help during the Cold War and the Afghanistan war against the Soviets. To please Pakistani army generals, the Reagan administration even called off an FBI investigation into the 1988 plane crash that killed the American ambassador to Pakistan, along with the dictator Zia ul-Haq.  The Pakistani army brass had indicated to their U.S. interlocutors that the blowing up of the C-130 aircraft had been an inside job, and that digging into it would “create problems” for them.  Today America needs the help of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services to fight anti-American militants, and I don’t expect the Obama administration to review the U.S. policy of overlooking their excesses.

I’m hoping, however, that Pakistanis themselves would eventually “create problems” for their power-drunk military and intelligence authorities. A new, politicized generation and highly motivated news media appear to be in no mood to endure the military’s repression and usurpation of political power.  In Pakistani streets and living rooms, Pakistani intelligence and army officers are excoriated, as never before, for their hubris, corruption and incompetence.

The Shehzad killing has been among the recent events that have highlighted this trend. It has rallied Pakistan’s journalist community, civil society groups, political activists and students behind the demand to bring his murderers to justice.  I don’t know of an earlier death in Pakistani intelligence or military custody that triggered similar outrage throughout Pakistan. Shehzad has paid the ultimate price to help galvanize Pakistanis to reform the instruments of their repression, in this case the rogues in their military-intelligence establishment.

Reining in these vain men in arms will not be easy, especially because Pakistani armed forces have never known civilian control. I don’t believe, however, that they can remain immune to the driving winds of democracy and freedom that are swirling in Pakistan and its neighborhoods.

• Mustafa Malik is the host of the blog Beyond Freedom: https://beyond-freedom.com.

Pakistan plays China card against U.S.

By Mustafa Malik

(Published in The San Francisco Chronicle, May 20; Islam and the West, May 22, 2011)

The rebuff couldn’t have been starker. Sen. John Kerry was probably still unwinding on his return from Pakistan when the Pakistani prime minister decided to test U.S. foreign policy. He declared in Shanghai, “China is a true friend and a time-tested and all-weather friend.” Translation: America isn’t a “true friend,” and Pakistan’s friendship with it didn’t stand the test of time.

In case anyone missed the point, Yousaf Raza Gilani added that China was “the first country to show its support and solidarity” with Pakistan after the U.S. Navy SEALS raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani town. Beijing had denounced the Navy SEALs’ incursion as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

In Islamabad, Kerry, D-Mass., had ruffled the feathers of Pakistani officials by declaring gratuitously May 15 that the purpose of his visit was “not to apologize” for the May 2 assault on the bin Laden house, which had infuriated Pakistanis. Further, he warned them about the congressional threat to cut off the $1.5 billion-a-year aid to Pakistan unless they cracked down harder on Taliban and al Qaeda guerrillas in their country. They needed to prove their commitment to the anti-terror campaign “with actions, not words,” demanded the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. President Obama often uses him as a trouble shooter when U.S. foreign policy is in a quandary.

The Pakistani prime minister’s China trip had been scheduled before the raid. But the anti-American tenor of Gilani’s remarks in Shanghai signaled that Pakistan had had enough of American “bullying” (as many Pakistanis describe it); that if need be, it could turn to other sources of economic and military support. Indeed, the hallmark of Gilani’s four-day trip was the signing of a series of agreements for China’s military, economic and financial aid to Pakistan and expansion of trade between the two countries.

Since long before the bin Laden raid, most of the Pakistan army generals, politicians and everyday citizens had become fed up with what they saw as Americans’ insensitivity to the huge sacrifices they were making in the anti-terror campaign. That campaign had cost Pakistan 35,000 civilian and 5,000 military lives and alienated much of the nation to its army and government. Yet Pakistanis in general view U.S. foreign policy as the cause of the terrorism that’s stalking their country.

During two trips, I was told over and over by Pakistanis from different walks of life that Pakistan hadn’t known suicide attacks until after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, that the Taliban began to organize in Pakistan only after that invasion and that their army and security forces were being used as “mercenaries” to fight “America’s war.” Most humiliating to many were Americans’ continual threats to cut off aid to ensure Islamabad’s compliance with U.S. demands.

China, of course, will be cautious not to let its expanding Pakistani ties jeopardize its economic and trade relations with the United States. Neither is Pakistan really spoiling for a fight with the United States or willing to endanger its substantial U.S. aid package. And the Obama administration knows that Pakistan’s cooperation and economic stability are crucial to its efforts to prevent it and Afghanistan from remaining terrorist havens. All the same, Gilani was using his China trip to warn Americans that they can’t take Pakistan for granted and that they need to treat it with greater respect.

Mustafa Malik, host of the blog Islam and the West, is a columnist in Washington. He worked as speechwriter and press aide for the late Pakistani Prime Minister Nurul Amin and carried out diplomatic assignments from the Pakistani government. Contact The Chronicle at sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1.