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The Role of Western Interests
Western
interests often blur the facts when Islamism is scrutinized. One of
the ironies of the current discussion about the threat of Islamism
in the post-Cold War era is that in significant ways it miscasts the
entire debate. For example, the Globe and Mail printed a map
entitled, "The Islamic Cauldron," representing the entire
Muslim world.(29)
The
map erroneously covered only North Africa and the Middle East while
excluding the most populous Muslim regions of south and southeast
Asia. Why were these areas not included in the Globe and Mail map?
The answer lies in what Zbigniew Brezinski calls the "arc of
crisis," an area of the globe that "stretches along the
shores of the Indian Ocean, with fragile social and political
structures in a region of vital importance to us threatened with
fragmentation. The resulting political chaos could well be filled by
elements hostile to our values and sympathetic to our
adversaries."(30)
It
is in this region that two things intersect: oil and the state of
Israel, both of which political Islam affects.
The U.S. State Department has described the Middle East as "a
stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest
material prizes in world history," "probably the richest
economic prize in the world in the field of foreign
investment," or, in President Eisenhower's words, the most
"strategically important area in the world."(31)
Richard
Nixon wrote that the Middle East's "oil is the lifeblood of
modern industry, the Persian Gulf region is the heart that pumps it,
and the sea routes around the Gulf are the jugular vein through
which that lifeblood passes." In a subsequent book, Nixon
argued that, because the Middle East is likely to remain "the
only source of significant exportable oil in the world for the next
twenty-five years, we have no choice but to remain engaged in the
area."(32)
Oil
was a central reason behind Operation Desert Storm. Secretary of
Defense Richard Cheney, speaking at the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, explained the American rationale for a military
presence in the Gulf:
Given
the enormous resources that exist in that part of the world, and
given the fact that those resources are in decline elsewhere, the
value of those resources is only going to rise in the years ahead,
and the United States and our major partners cannot afford to have
those resources controlled by somebody who is fundamentally hostile
to our interests.(33)
The
New York Times leaked excerpts from the Pentagon's "Defense
Planning Guidelines for the Fiscal Years 1994-1999" in 1992.
The report stated that the overall U.S. concern was to "remain
the predominant outside power in the region and [to] preserve the
U.S. and Western access to the region's oil." The report also
recommended that the United States "prevent a hegemony or
alignment of powers from dominating the region. This pertains
especially to the Arabian peninsula."(34)
The
main regional threats to Western hegemony in the area are the
popular Islamist movements which form the main opposition to the
unelected and autocratic governments. William Quandt, author of
Peace Process, acknowledges that "most regimes have little mass
support," that "opposition movements that reject the
present order are widespread," and that, for the most part,
"economic development is stalled."(35)
Stated
simply, the political and ideological goals of Islamism clash with
Western interests in the Middle East.
Khalid
Bin Sayeed notes in Western Dominance and Political Islam that
Islamists define their goals as establishing an alternative social
and political system challenging Western control over Muslim land
and resources in the Middle East. Therefore, socio-political Islam
in this sense cannot play an accommodative or subordinate role to
Western hegemony as current regimes in the area do.(36)
The
other American concern is Israel. From Israel's perspective,
Islamist groups are the main challengers to its regional hegemony.
They ardently oppose the 1993 Israel-Arafat Accords. In 1991,
Israel's leading West Bank correspondent, Danny Rubenstein,
predicted that the self-rule proposed by Israel and the U.S. is
analogous to the "autonomy of a POW camp, where the prisoners
are 'autonomous' to cook their meals without interference and to
organize cultural events."(37)
In
other words, self rule gives control over basic services, with
Yasser Arafat playing the role, according to Benjamin Netanyahu, of
a "subcontractor," to crush Palestinian resistance.(38)
American
partiality threatens to derail the process. Former secretary of
State James Baker III publicly acknowledged that the peace process
was "basically constructed on Israel's terms."(39)
The
ongoing settlement activity in the occupied territories, backed and
financed by the United States, is yet another destabilizing factor.(40)
A
recently announced Israeli housing initiative "represents a
marked increase in the pace of construction initiated by the Rabin
government in the Occupied Territories during its first two
years."(41)
According
to a former high ranking member of Israel's intelligence services,
"In the [five year] interim period [of the peace accords] the
Jewish population of Judea and Samaria will double."(42)
Such
iniquitous conditions engender a reaction; and in this case Islamist
forces lead the opposition.
The issues of oil, Israel, Islamism and the West, intersect at a
regional level as a result of the U.S. view of Israel as a strategic
asset and reliable ally in protecting Western interests in the
Middle East. In 1958, the U.S. National Security Council proposed
that a "logical corollary" against those who opposed
American interests in the region, "would be to support Israel
as the only strong pro-Western power left in the Middle East."(43)
At
the time, Arab nationalism threatened Western allies in the region.
The British cabinet's Eastern Committee, established after World War
I, referred to these regimes as an "Arab Facade," whom
Lord Curzon described as being "ruled and administered under
British guidance and controlled by a native Mohammedan, and, as far
as possible, by an Arab staff."(44)
These
states made up of impotent monarchies and family dictatorships
remained in power "veiled by constitutional fictions, as a
protectorate, a sphere of influence, a buffer State, and so
on."(45)
America's
strategic view of the Middle East envisions Israel and the
"Arab Façade" as regional gendarmes, whose main
preoccupation is battling Islamist forces. In the aftermath of the
Cold War, Israel's strategic function remains the same. The former
head of Israeli military intelligence, General (reserve) Shlomo
Gazit, explicitly stated:
Israel's main task has not changed at all, and it remains of crucial
importance.
Its
location at the centre of the Arab-Muslim Middle East predestines
Israel to be a devoted guardian of stability in all the countries
surrounding it. Its [role] is to protect the existing regimes: to
prevent or halt the processes of radicalisation, and to block the
expansion of fundamentalist religious zealotry.(46)
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