To make it simpler, the Geek stipulates that each and every of these places is noted for poverty, low educational levels, short-life expectancy, and a generally reactionary view of life. However it may pain the High Minded and Lofty Thinking, these don't have genuine significance.
There are factors at work in all these areas which prime them particularly for the role of seedbeds of Islamism and its armed twin, jihadism. Unless these factors are recognised, their power correctly estimated, and their impact properly measured with the results taken into account, no effective policy to counter Islamism/jihadism can be formulated.
The basic reality for all of these places is simply that none has an organic, authentic reason to exist as more than a geographic expression. Despite the appearances, appurtenances, and niceties of international convention, none of these so-called "countries" is a nation-state as such is generally understood. Nor does any of them have a real probability of becoming even a simulacrum of a nation-state in the foreseeable future.
All are creations of international politics, of both colonialism and the post-colonial rush to nationhood which characterised the decades following World War II. None arose naturally from shared history, common language, the centripetal effects of culture, social structure and universal defining mythology.
Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and, yes, even Pakistan are fundamentally pre-national. Their social structure is tribal. Primary loyalties are to the family, and beyond that to the assemblage of families, the tribe.
None have an economic reason to exist as national entities. All have, at most, an economic context which allows for subsistence level existence by a limited population. None have the actual or potential capacity for effective, full participation in a regional, let alone the global economy. (It should be noted that without the oil deposits below the sand, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf sheikdoms would be in the same category.)
Historically the several listed places have never had more than episodes of coherent, centralised government. Typically these periods have been marked by the emergence of a temporary strongman at the center in response to a transient external threat. Rarely has the duration of the central regime lasted more than a few years, a generation at most. There has been, in short, no evolutionary trajectory of an all-inclusive central government in a dynamic relationship with subsidiary governments and the people as a whole.
We who live in nation-states which represent the end product of centuries of often bloody evolution of political theories and institutions tend to forget just how long and difficult the road to the present has been. And, how littered with dead bodies the route has been. We also forget that we are still in the process of trying to perfect the nation-states in which we live.
(One of the more ironic features of intellectual life today is that while we demand that non-states such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and a host of others leap from the pre-national to the national, Western elites are pushing for the abandonment of the nation-state as the root of most, if not all, evil so as to embrace the post-national future.)
The only apparent unifying factor within the peoples of the listed "countries" is Islam. However, even this unity is far more apparent than real. Even in principle there is no one, uniform brand of Islam. Not only are there the Four Schools of the Sunni, there is the Shi'a form. And, there are variants such as that represented by the Sufi. Additionally, there are forms of interpretation within the Four Schools such as Wahhibism.
In practice there are even more divisions, more factions, more invitations to disunity within the Community of the Faithful. The non-hierarchical nature of Islam along with the relative absence of synods with the capacity to assure doctrinal compliance gives every cleric the opportunity and impetus to form his own understanding and promulgate it with the view of gaining adherents.
Beyond these inherent divisions there is another. Just as Christianity has "Sunday only" Christians and Judaism its "High Holy Days only" Jews, so also does Islam have its own In-The-Mosque only" Muslims.
The follower of Islam can exist anywhere along a continuum from a point of nominal membership to one of pro forma devotion to one of extreme commitment. Most Muslims are observant, follow the Five Pillars, join the community in prayers without embracing the demands of political Islam, the war whoops of Islamism and jihadism.
From all indications the Muslims of the non-states fall somewhere on the continuum. Some are Islamists. Most are observant. Some are nominalists. There is no unity in the religion any more than there is in other features of the polity and society.
The rub comes from the often demonstrated reality that the True Believers, the Islamists, the jihadists, are most willing to use force to assure their ascendancy. The others, the majority, the observant Muslims, are not nearly so eager to kill and die. Unless and until there is a species of Thermidor, the Islamist jihadists will be able to kill their way to power. On the up side, events in Iraq have shown that the Thermidor eventually comes even if incompletely.
The first challenge for US policy is that of acknowledging the limits of pretense.
In some cases, such as Pakistan, it may be utterly crucial to pretend that Pakistan is a genuine nation-state and not simply the creation of a handful of scared and ambitious Muslims sixty plus years ago which has been kept in existence by the repeated and timely interjection of military rule. In the case of Pakistan the pretense of nation-state status has been continued with such vigor for so long and with results such that the fraud must be continued in the hopes it will become a reality before the country slips into the hands of the Islamists.
Afghanistan has become our little Frankenstein's monster. We have so over committed to the (spurious) notion that the place is a nation-state that we cannot simply kill as many Taliban as possible in the next few months, declare victory and get out. As the recent controversy over Article 132 of the draft law demonstrated, the US and its allies are all for democracy as long as it gives results which meet our approval. There is every probability that the national elections in August will see an Islamist tilting government come to power via the ballot box.
This probability becomes almost a certainty if Taliban were to follow the recent advice of the UN's Man in Kabul. He called for the gunslinging martyrdom seekers to come in from the cold and join in the election process. Should Taliban under whatsoever cover do so, there is a better than excellent chance it would gain a plurality if not an outright majority of the votes.
This would present a pretty problem for the Obama administration. It is highly unlikely that the vox populi would be acceptable if it turns out to be the vox dei of the Islamist persuasion. Karzai will go whatever theological route is marked, "This Way To Power." Taliban, like the Nazis more than seventy-five years ago, will have come to power through democratic means. In essence the US and its partners will be voted out by the very methods we demanded be put in place.
Should this scenario come to pass it will be irony of the most delicious sort.
With respect to Somalia, the US and other Western countries had best accept reality. There is no way in which outside powers can transmute the dross which is Somalia today into some sort of democratic solid gold. The best which can be accomplished is to restrain the bloody chaos from spreading to Kenya or other coterminous states. It is time to recognise that Somalia is not so much a failed state as a state that never was.
Yemen seems condemned to go the same direction as Somalia. Yemen, like its counterpart across the narrow Gulf of Aden, is a state that never really was. Through most of the past forty plus years Yemen was officially two countries constantly at war with each other. The two were also the pawns of regional powers and very minor proxies in the Cold War contest at the margins. Subsequent to the consolidation of the two into one, there has been sporadic insurgency in the north. Al-Qaeda has been active in the south. Tribalism is rife. The central government is virtually powerless--even in the capital itself.
If Yemen slips down the tubes of Islamism the strategic problem for the US is far from insignificant.
As the impact of the pirates of Puntland has demonstrated, it does not take much in the way of resolutely applied armed force to pose a grave challenge to the global economy and the governments that desire to assure freedom of navigation. While the collective naval force available could, if properly employed, immunise the shipping against pirate attack, there is not yet any consensually accepted course of action available to deal with captured pirates. Nor is there any consensus on the necessity of pirates being killed. Unless and until these two lacks are addressed, the joining of Yemen based raiders to those of Somalia will be a very significant threat to global trade.
Yemen is a perfect base for the training, equipping and mounting of attacks on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Islamist jihadists would undoubtedly greatly increase their use of the venue with results which could be very embarrassing to the West generally. It is debatable whether or not the Saudi armed forces would be able to interdict the movement of jihadists to and from bases in Yemen. It is even more debatable whether or not a foreign interventionary force would be able to "pacify" the territory of Yemen.
The current government of Yemen, like its counterpart in Somalia, wants money. The pretense from Saana is that with oodles and gobs of money, the present regime can purchase sufficient support to stay in power and extend stability throughout the country. The same lyrics are sung by the Somali Transitional Federal Authority.
While there is a measure of truth in the claims of both let's-pretend governments, it is small. Money in these geographic expressions is like payments to a blackmailer. They both buy peace. But the peace is short and the demands never ending.
No amount of outside money can create a nation-state from a geographic expression. No amount of outside money can maintain a state which lacks any reason to exist. No amount of outside money, aid, advice, or good intentions can can transform a state that never was into one which has an existence both now and into the future.
We have to get a grip on that.
1 comment:
Good job. BTW Happy Not quite Cinco de Mayo
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