Informed Comment

*Dawn reports that a senior US State Department official has said, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are in safe hands and the United States is satisfied with the measures Islamabad has taken to secure them, says a senior official of the US State Department. The official was not named by Dawn but presumably was Undersecretary of State for South Asia Christine Rocca. She is quoted as saying, “Our overall assessment is that Pakistan has control of its nuclear arsenal and there is very little doubt about the fact that they have got it under wraps.” The US has not given Pakistan the sort of help it gave post-Soviet Russia in securing its nuclear weapons sites. Pakistan has not requested such assurance. Although the US seems satisfied at the moment, things could change. Were there to be a coup against Musharraf by radical fundamentalist officers aligned with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, there seems little doubt that the US would immediately try to take out Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal at Kahuta. What would happen if the fundamentalist Muttahidah Majlis-i `Amal or United Action Council, which controls the NWFP, came to power in the federal parliament, is not clear. It would probably provoke a similar crisis unless the Pakistani military could reassure Washington that the civilian politicians had no access to the nukes.

*[With regard to categorizing Muslim political groups:] I may sometimes

use it, but I am not enamored of the phrase “Islamist.” It

will never catch on with the journalists, but I would propose that we make

some distinctions for academic purposes. Let us take the universe of

political and social groups that define themselves with reference primarily

to Islam.

1) What is a group’s political goal? If it is a Muslim dictatorship or

oligarchy and the thoroughgoing implementation of a fundamentalist reading

of Islamic law, the group consists of *Muslim theocrats*. If it is

parliamentary democracy with a mixed legal system that includes input from

Islamic law, the group consists of *Muslim democrats.*

2) The second question is how the goal is to be achieved. If the group is

committed to using violence, it has chosen a radical path. If it is

willing to work in a law-abiding way for its goals, it has chosen a

moderate path. (The goal may not strike anyone as moderate, but the way of

achieving it is nonviolent and so moderate). Note that none of these terms

is meant to be value-laden. George Washington was a radical democrat. The

ancient Israel Americans hear praised every week from the pulpit could

probably be categorized at some points as a theocracy. On the other hand,

realistically speaking, radicals will be disliked and where possible

prosecuted by states.

Logically speaking then, we have two possible goals and two possible

methods, yielding four potential combinations. You can have

a) radical Muslim theocrats

b) moderate Muslim theocrats,

c) radical Muslim democrats

d) moderate Muslim democrats.

Radical Muslim theocrats are represented by the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and by

Omar `Abdu’r-Rahman’s al-Gamaa al-Islamiya and Ayman al-Zawahiri’s al-Jihad

al-Islami in Egypt. Moderate Muslim theocrats are represented by the new

al-Gamaa al-Islamiya in Egypt that has renounced violence from Tura Prison.

Most Muslim democrats, whether Soroush in Iran or the Ak Party in Turkey,

are moderate. But one could imagine radical religious democrats, as, for

instance, with the American Baptists who fought in the Revolutionary War

for democracy. I have the sense that by 2001 some of the anti-Taliban

Muslims in Afghanistan aligned with the Northern Alliance were hoping for a

parliamentary system that could accommodate the shariah or Islamic law.

They were entirely willing to support violence against the Taliban.

Dick Bulliet has usefully divided political groups in the Muslim world into

those who support an imarah system and those who support parliamentary

democracy. The imarah option is essentially one-man rule by an Amir with

implementation of the shariah or a fundamentalist approach to Islamic law

as his policy–what I am calling theocracy. The Taliban, obviously, is an

example of the imarah, and I would argue that 1980s Iran under Khomeini,

despite some nods to controlled elections, was more or less an imarah. The

Jama`at-i Islami in Pakistan during the 1980s also denounced parliamentary

democracy as un-Islamic and advocated having a pious amir (which made it

easy for them to ally with Gen. Zia ul-Haqq, who came close to their

ideal). Hasan Turabi in the Sudan was a similar story until the military

government broke with him. These are all theocrats, whether radical

(Khomeini’s Hizbullah) or moderate (Pakistan’s Jama`at-i Islami).

On the other hand, I think the Muslim Ak Party in Turkey genuinely has

committed to parliamentary politics, and so are in my schema moderate

Muslim democrats. I would argue that there is a range within the Muslim

democrats, from those who just object to a totally secular legal system and

want more Islamic-law influence, to those who want Islamic law to be the

primary legal basis of society. If they are committed to regular free and

fair elections on a multi-party basis, they would be democrats regardless

of their legal philosophy, in my schema. Thus, the old Welfare Party led

by Erbakan probably wanted more in the way of Islamization than does

today’s Ak Party (though Ak wants some, certainly).

The mainstream Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan al-Muslimin has decided to

cooperate with parliamentary elections in Egypt and, where possible, in

Jordan. The Egyptian Ikhwan has also foresworn violence as a root to

power. For the most part, then, the Ikhwan are *not* radicals according to

my typology. The problem is that this decision is different from saying

that the Egyptian Ikhwan backs “democracy.” Were they to get into power,

we cannot know if they would simply decide not to hold any more elections.

I am not prepared to say that the Egyptian Ikhwan has gone so far in this

direction as has Ak. I suspect that most politically active Ikhwan are

moderate theocrats. Their ultimate goal is not democracy.

This question of how committed the Ikhwan are to democracy goes back to a

time when Egypt had something more like meaningful elections, however

corrupt the old Wafd was. Al-Banna announced around 1941 that the Ikhwan

should join the political system. But then he subverted that system with

terrorist training camps, assassinations, and paramilitary activities for

the rest of the ’40s, via the “secret apparatus.” I think he was a

theocrat all along, and that we cannot trust his public pronouncements

about getting involved in the parliamentary system.

That is, when we analyze fundamentalist Muslim political parties, we cannot

simply take their statements at face value, since they have a history of

covert policies and use of extra-legal and paramilitary measures.

FIS in Algeria likewise decided to contest elections in the early 1990s,

but it is not clear that its leaders were committed to parliamentary

democracy in principle. It would have been entirely possible for them to

annul the constitution and implement a theocracy. The vehemence with which

they turned to terrorism when they were blocked from taking power strikes

me as suspicious.

I do not know enough about Ghanoushi and al-Nahdah in the present

incarnations to be sure where to place them. In the 1970s Ghanoushi was a

theocrat, but he may have changed. Tunisian university friends of mine

remember him trying to take over the faculty union and get them fired for

being secularists. They remember him as ruthless.

Sami al-Arian is certainly a fundamentalist Muslim theocrat with regard to

his goals. That is not in question. The question is whether he is a

radical activist who actively contributed to the implementation of

terrorist acts. The US appears to have gathered enough evidence for the

latter from its surveillance abroad to risk going to a judge with it.

Apparently in the 1990s it was not possible to present such evidence,

gathered overseas, at the trial of a US resident. That has now changed.

Essentially the Justice Department is now applying the techniques it

earlier honed against the Mafia to Muslim radicals.

I am not sure we will get to see the evidence (nor would I be happy if

not), but I think it is premature to assume that there is no solid evidence.

Kurdish civilians are scattering from their towns, fearful of being bombarded with poison Iraq by the Baath Party if war breaks out with the US. The Baathists hit the Kurds with poison gas in 1988 for colluding with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. The horrible attack on Halabja in March of that year left an estimated 5,000 dead. Journalist Shirzad Shaykhali toured the area for Asharq al-Awsat and found many people terrified and moving or thinking about moving to the countryside.

It would be a grotesque nightmare if Saddam tried to take more innocent Kurds down with him as his armageddon approaches. It seems to me, though that he would have difficulty delivering the gas at this point. The US would interdict gunship helicopters or fixed wing planes, and it is not clear he has any scuds left. Let’s hope I’m right.

*In an interview on an Arabic television program in Dubai, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that in the case of a war, there would be only a brief period of rule over Iraq by a US military leader, so as to ensure order. He said the US wanted to rebuild Iraq, not to destroy it. As soon as possible, he said, the military administration would transfer its authority to a civilian one. (Apparently this is to be a US civilian proconsul, a la Lord Cromer in British Egypt, though the US says it will be just for a year or two until an Iraqi government can be implemented). Powell, when asked if the US was implementing a form of imperialism, said the US has a track record in this regard. He denied that the US is occupying Afghanistan, and pointed to its record after WW II in Japan, Germany and Italy. This reply does not seem to me very convincing, since the question is whether the new doctrine of aggressive preemption is changing those past policies.