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ONE may not agree with the vicious attack launched by right-wing Republicans on US President Barack Obama on his stance on violent extremism. But the White House summit last week raises many questions about his administration’s new approach to combat terrorism and radicalisation at home and abroad.
Contradictions abound in Obama’s pronouncements and the US policy on the ground. While seeking to rally around the international community, particularly the Muslim nations for the campaign against the Islamic State (IS) and other terrorist groups Obama ignored the flawed US policy in the Middle East that is stoking violent extremism. There is certainly no such realisation yet.
One cannot agree more with the US president that radicalism is fuelled by political and economic grievances and his emphasis on the need to widen a culture of tolerance to end the cycle of hate. Yet there seems to be no major change in the US policy of supporting authoritarian regimes with the worst record of human rights violations. Many US allies in the fresh international counterterrorism campaign are among the most repressive regimes.
Indeed, the timing of the counterterrorism initiative is highly significant, drawing both domestic and international attention. Held in the wake of IS extending its operations from Iraq and Syria to Libya, and the rising number of incidents of violent extremism in Europe, the conference brought together religious leaders, social service providers as well as representatives of some 60 countries. A major objective of the summit was to draw up a framework to contain radicalisation and galvanise an international coalition to stop the advancement of the IS.
Obama’s insistence that America is fighting “violent extremism” rather than radical Islam and his refusal to describe the rise of IS as religious war irked his opponents at home. It was certainly a departure from the Bush era discourse of ‘Islamist terrorism’. The massive attack by right-wing US leaders was inevitable. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, questioned Obama’s patriotism for delinking Islam from extremism. Many others have accused the president of cowardice for what they described as a soft approach.
What is missing in Obama’s anti-militancy approach is the lack of recognition of the real issues.
It is, indeed, a perennial challenge for the Obama administration to strike a balance between his cautious approach and the pressure from the right-wing to take a more aggressive position in the fight against terrorism. That has resulted in a foreign policy paralysis throughout his term in office. It was not the first time Obama used the term ‘violent extremism’ instead of ‘Islamist terrorism’, but the terminology by itself does not matter much.
What is missing in Obama’s counterterrorism approach is the lack of recognition of the real issues behind the rise of violent extremism in the Middle East. Undoubtedly, the most important factor in fuelling radicalisation in the Muslim world is the deprivation of the rights of the Palestinians.
In his famous speech in Cairo in June 2009, Obama unwrapped a bold overture for the Islamic world. He talked in powerful terms about the humiliation and repression of the Palestinian people. He grieved over their plight as “intolerable” after 60 years of statelessness.
Obama’s empathetic tone highlighting the Palestinian suffering won him immense admiration in the region and around the world. His words raised hope of his administration playing a more active role on the Palestinian issue. But all those empathetic words seem to have been forgotten since Obama’s inspiring Cairo speech.
The promised push for peace in the Middle East never materialised. Instead, we have seen a dramatic escalation in Israeli aggression and the establishment of an increasing number of new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, displacing thousands of more Palestinians from their homes. The silence of the West on Israeli barbarism has added to the despair and frustration of the occupied population.
For sure the rise of IS poses the greatest threat not only to the Muslim world, but also to global security. There is, indeed, an urgent need for building a wider coalition for effectively countering this growing menace. But one must also understand the cause that has led to the emergence of terrorist groups like IS. It was essentially the destruction of the Iraqi state by the American invasion that provided impetus to the rise of IS. Many former Iraqi soldiers joined the fray turning the jihadi group into a formidable fighting machinery.
Similarly, the genuine freedom struggle against the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria was taken over by the jihadists aided and armed by Western countries and their allies in the Arab world. The same groups later came to form the nucleus of IS. That inevitably revived the dormant Sunni-Shia sectarianism which spilled over across the Middle East.
Libya is another case in point. Again it was Western military intervention that unravelled the situation there. The ongoing civil war in the country with two parallel governments operating there has provided IS jihadists space to strengthen their foothold in the region. In both Iraq and Libya, Western military intervention and the overthrow of dictatorial regimes resulted in complete chaos.
British journalist and author Patrick Cockburn rightly points out that Western military intervention destroyed the vision of national unity that could hold feuding tribes and religious sects together. Jihadism has rushed into the void, providing many young Muslims with a sense of identity, purpose and vision. Not only are the US boots back on the ground in Iraq, there is also escalating danger of greater Western involvement in Libya, the latest theatre of the IS war.
No doubt, Obama is right in his argument that when people spew hatred on others because of their faith or because they are immigrants, it feeds into terrorist narratives. Indeed, stereotyped attitudes towards Muslims are a strong factor in feeding radicalisation among the Muslim youth growing up in the West. But, at the same time, there is also a need for the West and particularly for the United States to re-examine their policies of military intervention. The lessons of Iraq and Libya must not be ignored.
The writer is an author and journalist.
Published in Dawn February 25th , 2015
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