THE WASHINGTON POST,Tuesday, November 20, 2001; Page A23
Arabs on Our Side
By Fareed Zakaria
While the events of last week have transformed the situation in Afghanistan, their
effects in Washington have been more comical. Gen. Tommy Franks, who 10 days
earlier was facing a barrage of criticism, is now being showered with praise.
Commentators who had been thundering about Washington's feeble war plans now
extol the suppleness of our strategy. The Northern Alliance, once scorned as a ragtag
bunch of misfits, is now spoken of with awe and affection. We should not have been
so surprised that the Afghans switched to the winning side so quickly. People in
Washington do it all the time.
So one great myth about the war against the Taliban -- that we were losing on the
ground -- has exploded. But another still stays strong. We hear daily that even as it is
vanquishing the foe, America is losing the propaganda war. Tensions are bubbling over
as we enter the month of Ramadan. The Arab street is angry. But is it? Martin Indyk,
former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, now a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution, has tracked the number of demonstrations in the Arab world
since the war began. In this swath of 21 countries, from Morocco and Tunisia in North
Africa to Yemen and Dubai in the Persian Gulf, here's how many anti-American
demonstrations have taken place. Week one: nine; week two: three; week three: one;
week four: two; week five (and this was the week that Mullah Mohammed Omar called
for mass protests, American bombs hit a hospital and Israeli tanks rolled into the
West Bank): zero; last week: one. After the first few days, these protests were tiny,
often made up of a thousand people. And this despite the daily diet of pictures of
Afghan children, Osama bin Laden's speeches and commentary from fiery radicals
that was broadcast by al-Jazeera, the Pan-Arab "news" network.
Or consider the situation in Pakistan, often talked about as a trembling domino.
Despite the fact that Mullah Omar and bin Laden both explicitly called for the toppling
of President Pervez Musharraf, despite support for their cause from Pakistan's
fundamentalist political parties, despite Pakistan's close ties to the Taliban, the
response from Pakistanis was a few scattered protests that never gained force.
Musharraf remains popular, and in fact his standing may have risen for steering the
ship of state so cleverly. The extremists had hoped that the country would shut down
for a day in sympathy for bin Laden. It never happened. Outside the Arab world the
reaction has been almost nonexistent. With the exception of a few hundred militant
extremists in Indonesia (a country with 200 million Muslims) and the Philippines,
there has been almost no serious political activity supporting bin Laden. Radical
Muslim "leaders" have tried to rally their people, but the people have chosen to stay
home.
This is not to say that there isn't plenty of anti-American sentiment in these countries.
There is, and it poses a serious problem for Washington. But it did not translate into
support for bin Laden, Islamic fundamentalism or terrorism. On the evidence of the
past six weeks, most Muslims are still struggling to combine their faith with modernity
and have not given in to fantasies about a medieval utopia based on "pure Islam."
(This conclusion is consistent with electoral results; in almost every election in the
Islamic world in which fundamentalists have taken part, they have done badly.) In
addition, American diplomacy and war strategy -- carefully tuned not to offend Muslim
sensibilities -- have made it impossible to portray this struggle as a clash of
civilizations. We have heard lots of bad news about the Muslim world in recent weeks
-- much of it true -- but let's take a moment to notice that there is some good news as
well.
Now we need to spread the cheer. The American position in the Arab world --
particularly among its leaders -- is stronger than it has been in years. Victory does
that. But we must use it to press Arab regimes to confront Islamic extremism, stop
encouraging their media to rant about America and Israel and open up their societies
to ease their people's sense of powerlessness and discontent.
We should say to the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the rest: "The past two
months have shown that there is no tidal wave of fundamentalism in your lands. You
don't need to pander to the extremists or to kill them and maintain a police state. You
can battle them politically. And if you deliver economic and political progress, the
fundamentalist threat will wither away." It will be a hard sell, because these regimes
are reluctant to take any chances. They all remember the fate of the shah of Iran. But
it's time to point out that that was almost 25 years ago and that the real lesson of the
Iranian revolution is that it did not spread anywhere and it brought misery to its
people.
Osama bin Laden did seem to appeal to millions of frustrated people in the Islamic
world. But much of his appeal was as an alternative to the wretched regimes of the
Arab world and as a symbol of defiance against the mighty American superpower.
Once you take success away from bin Laden, what's left is a spoiled Saudi millionaire
with a medieval world view. It turned out that there wasn't much support for that in the
Muslim world.
The writer is editor of Newsweek International and a columnist for Newsweek.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
|
