First, there were rumors in France about
vague threats. Nobody paid attention. Then, a story run by Sky News was
taken over by other media and propagated. Lately, came the publication
by the US Department of State of a warning against travel to some
European countries, which startled me and aroused curiosity about the
kind of intelligence that permits such alarms…
In France,
officials gave no clue about the existence of a real threat, although
they keep repeating: yes, there are terrorists at large, which they
assume we don’t know. All we saw so far are speculations at the eve of
great strikes that may be very upsetting to the government. Meanwhile,
the alarms whether they are founded or not, seemed like telling
potential terrorists: careful! Don’t do it now. We’re watching. Later
maybe; when you see that things calmed down.
And here I come to
the last speech of Tony Blair in New York. He reportedly said that the
West is being outmaneuvered by violent Islamist extremists.
Unbelievable, isn’t it?
Blair was the best ally of Bush in the
anti-terrorist campaign and the rush that ensued 9/11. Today he says: “a
narrative that Muslims were under attack from the US and its allies,
who act out of support for Israel, had been allowed to take hold, aided
by websites and blogs.” And he states that “it will be impossible to
defeat extremism without defeating the narrative that nurtures it.”
Well
done! But two questions need answers: 1- Is it a narrative without any
kind of basis in the real world? 2- Is it an orphan narrative without
similar or parallel in the West?
I think the West is still
misinformed about the real reasons of anger in the Arab and Islamic
world. That’s why the Western leaders see and try to tackle the symptoms
without seeing or tackling the roots of the malaise.
And who
informs the Western Leaders? Their intelligence apparatus in the first
place. Well. Take the US intelligence agencies. They have been
over-assessed because the US has the technology and means to exploit the
“mine” of intelligence better than any other state in the world,
especially since the fall of the USSR. There used to be a tendency to
believe in the omnipotence of the agencies of security such as the CIA,
NSA, etc... Thanks to the movies industry. The boom in communications
technology has so greatly contributed to the myth that the Americans
themselves have started to believe in too until the tragedy of September
11 made everybody realise that the United States is very poorly
informed about its own internal security. And if it is misinformed about
its own safety, how can she claim to provide it to the allies, for
example?
A government ill-informed, even if it is the world’s
most powerful – and perhaps because it is the most powerful, can make
bad decisions and make fatal policy errors. The most direct consequence
of such behaviour is that the US government will seek to engage all its
allies on a political line which, because it took the wrong foot, will
never reach its objectives and thus contribute to discredit the whole
alliance. There are several clues that tell us that despite their
apparent agreement with respect to the overall objectives of the US
administration, many allies (Afghan, Pakistani, Arab and African
leaders, etc...) do not see the same way the objective. This may be not a
simple difference of opinion with no impact on reality, but a
fundamental disagreement.
Examples: for many Lebanese –
including Christians – Hizbollah is a political party like any other
with sits in parliament, and most significantly they recognise he has
won the right to political participation for he defended the national
territory against Israel. In the Palestinian territories, no one will
speak of Hamas as a terrorist organisation: the movement has won a
landslide in 2005. And nobody, neither from the Palestinians nor from
foreign observers, ever seriously challenged the election results. If
the US and Western allies were committed to the cause of democracy in
the region, what more could be achieved to convince them that democracy
was taking hold in Palestine? Normally, the democratic election of Hamas
should have been satisfying. But the problem is that Hamas is a
“terrorist” organisation for them and so is Hizbollah.
If such
are the premises, no US administration will find enough Arab and Muslim
leaders capable of following up cogently with any political process
agreed upon in “exceptional” conditions. Clearly, the narrative Blair
was talking about would not take hold as it actually does if you remove
the soil in which it gets its seeds planted, grown and harvested.
The
fact is the West does not want to face reality: one has to recognise
that these societies as sophisticated and democratic as they could be
are almost handicapped by their own fears to which they seem to
understand nothing. They feel threatened and they do not want to admit
that they created their own monsters while dealing with Muslims, Arabs,
Palestinians, etc., unfairly. It may happen that it is not real threats
from violent fanatics they face, but their own conscience full of guilt.
To defeat extremism, we should work on narratives of both
sides, not a single one. If a certain number of Muslims get convinced
that the West is aggressive towards Islam, do you really think that the
kinds of campaigns we now see on the Western media are likely to
convince them of the contrary? Each time, these warnings are issued,
Muslim communities in Europe feel stigmatised and not safe. They also
feel the same thing when they hear the mumbo-jumbo about Muslim
traditions, clothes, rites, etc.
So, the narrative
saying that “Muslims are under attack from the US and its allies” could
not be fathomed without mentioning another narrative (in the West)
conveying all the negative stereotypes about Islam and saying: “Muslims
are invading Europe. They are taking our bread and our riches. They are
polluting our environment with minarets. The clothes of their women are
an insult to our conception of freedom. And above all, they hide
potential suicide-bombers and terrorists.” Should we remind anybody that
with such a discourse, several European extremist right-wing leaders
have been able to gather enough voices to make traditional conservative
governments seek also to gain these voices by shooting the same target?
The Gulf Today, October 9, 2010
|