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December 7, 2003
Time to put down the burden
M.J. Akbar compares the situation in Iraq today with what it was in the thirteenth century when the Mongols sacked Baghdad
PERHAPS George Bush, worried too much by the horrifying thought of military failure in his war against Saddam Hussein, did not spend enough time thinking about the meaning of success. By one yardstick, the height of Bush’s power can be measured very easily, by the depth of Arab impotence. Or at least the impotence of Arab governments. It can be argued that after Vietnam America learnt to choose its enemies with more care than its friends, a vital lesson.
Bush in particular is a soft-target war-maker. Wars can be won in three days or three years. Their aftermath is more troublesome. Bush has altered the political landscape, but in ways he may live to regret. By removing Saddam, he has done Iraq the kind of favour he does not sufficiently understand.
Saddam Hussein was a usurper who exploited Iraqi nationalism to protect his tyranny. It would be a mistake to romanticize the fall and disappearance of Saddam. He was more clever than powerful. He milked, as much as he could, Arab anger against Israel and neo-colonialism. But being a tyrant, he was a problem rather than a solution.
Saddam Hussein belonged to what might be called the ‘alibi’ category of post-colonial, Third World leaders, men who used a multiplicity of excuses to protect their dictatorships. Their origins were usually legitimate. Many of them did genuinely battle their way to power, in freedom movements against either foreign powers or in internal struggles against monarchies of the kind that the British left behind when they withdrew from their Arab colonies.
The distance between power and people continues to grow. Power generally prevails, except when wrecked by an explosion. In Iraq the explosion was artificially induced, but the ripples will appear both on the surface and as an undercurrent that will invade the region, perhaps travelling along the oil beds under the desert, or whispered from mosque to mosque. The motives for anger against the establishment often differ, and sometimes overlap. An explosion can have many components that react until critical mass is reached. Saudi Arabia is an implosion waiting to happen. Corrective steps can always be taken, in Saudi Arabia as anywhere else. But democracy, the only real answer, is not a gift that can be given in parts, string first, followed by wrapping paper while the real object is kept dangling on a string for delivery on some unspecified date.
Fear of freedom is the motif of most ruling clans in the Muslim world. In a few cases the establishment has been sensible enough to appreciate that this is a means to disaster. Indonesia and Bangladesh are untidy examples, but they are examples nevertheless. A slew of television news channels in the Arab world could be the glimmer of a new dawn, for they will foment change even as they report. A crisis encouraged their birth, and war sustained their birth. The Arab channels, led by Al Jazeera, can thank George Bush for the second Iraq war as much as CNN thanked his father for the first one.
Who will occupy the political space that George Bush cleared in Baghdad? That is the hinge around which the future of the region will turn. If America keeps its commitment to democracy, then Iraqi nationalism will take on a Shia hue. It will be influenced by the lament and anger of its own anguished past. Iraqi Shias believe that they have been oppressed and wronged throughout Islamic history, but defeat has redoubled their commitment to their faith. Life for them is a constant struggle between haq (truth) and batel (falsehood). This will link with Muslim anger elsewhere, irrespective of whether it is Shia or Sunni.
They will seek to challenge the West by the terms of reference set by Ayatollah Khomeini, as the Hezbollah has done. Shias will have state power in the two major nations of the Middle East, Iran and Iraq; and while this does not mean that the two countries will synchronize every policy, it does mean that it will enable them to lead the Islamic response to any perceived, or actual, Western political or economic hegemony. The conflict over the gold of the Euphrates is not over. This emerging Shia power might prefer disguise before it feels strong enough to assert itself...
Patrick Seale put it well in Gulf News on April 25, 2003: ‘It seems inevitable that the United States and the Shiites (sic) of Iraq must soon find themselves locked in a struggle for power. This is because the Shiites — some 60 per cent of the population — are the only indigenous force able to challenge the American military presence and, conversely, because the U.S. Army in Iraq is the only force able to prevent a Shiite seizure of power. The survival of the Islamic Republic of Iran against difficult odds, and the success of the Hezbollah in Lebanon, have bolstered Shia self-belief. The Hezbollah calls itself an Islamic struggle movement, and considers 1982 a pivotal year in its history. That was when Israel invaded Lebanon and occupied Beirut, the second Arab capital, in its lexicon, to be occupied (the first is Jerusalem). The Hezbollah does not believe that it could have succeeded without the ideological leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini and his categorical definition of the enemy, the Great Satan, and its stooges, the munafiqeen, or the hypocrites. The Hezbollah believes that it drove Israel out of Lebanon, a singular success story in a long history of defeat. It took 18 years of faith to do so.
Past tense
When in February 1258 the killing stopped and the looting paused in Baghdad, Hulagu, grandson of Chingiz Khan, creator of the sole superpower of his age, asked the Baghdad ulema or religious heads a straight question: ‘Which man is better as a sovereign? An unbeliever who is just, or a Muslim who is unjust?’
The question is not substantially different from the one posed to the people of Iraq by George Bush. The 13th century clerics were silent until one of the sages, Radiuddin Ali, wrote down the collective answer: ‘The unbeliever who is just should be preferred to the unjust believer’.
It would be convenient to report that this is where the matter ended. But there was more than one response, and delivered over time. No one seriously suggested that the Abbasids be restored to the throne; that era was dead, killed by its own excesses and buried by the Mongol avalanche, just as the self-destructive Baathists were interred by the American onslaught. But to reject the Abbasids was not synonymous with accepting the Mongols.
The Mongols made all the right noises. They promised that the new government would be run by Iraqis, and did not advertise the difference between control and administration. Hulagu retained Ibn al-Kamiya, who had served the Sultan and betrayed him, as the vizier or prime minister. Till today Arab schoolchildren repeat the sentence, ‘Cursed by God be he who curses not Ibn al-Kamiya.’ Hulagu’s forces had a few anti-Abbasid Muslims, just as the Americans had Kurds in the van. But guilt was never very far away from their minds.
But there were also those who responded to this crisis by discovering conviction. The first to stand up to Hulagu was Nassir, Sultan of Syria, whose strength did not justify his defiance. Hulagu sent him an ultimatum: Resist, and face annihilation; accept and find safety. Nasir replied: ‘Resistance to you is obedience to God...If we slay you, our prayers will have been answered. If you slay us, we go to Paradise.
On September 12, 1259 the Mongols marched into Syria, with the usual results. Cities fell and were destroyed but Nassir remained in the field. He had bought time. Behind him a great revival was taking place under the Mamelukes in Egypt. And in front of him, Hulagu was suddenly diverted — by an election. Hulagu got word that the Great Khan had died and turned towards home for the Ordu, or the election of the new chief by family, clan and leaders. In his absence, the Mamelukes defeated the Mongols in the defining battle of Ain Jalut on September 3, 1260. That was the end of Mongol invincibility. Even though Hulagu returned to Syria he no longer aroused the same dread. In a fascinating twist, Hulagu’s brother, Berkai, leader of the Mongols in Russia, announced in an open letter that he and his four brothers had converted to Islam. He charged Hulagu with the destruction of Baghdad, and in alliance with the Mamelukes sent an army through the Caucasus, which defeated Hulagu on January 13, 1263. Hulagu died on February 8, 1265. He was 48.
There has never been a time when the Islamic world was under such pressure as in that era. Jerusalem was lost, and even after it was taken back by Saladin, the threat from the West was constant and severe. From the east appeared the Mongols to ravage and rule, while Crusader armies, dreaming of an alliance with the Mongols, swarmed in from the west till Egypt, Syria and Palestine all seemed lost. The new saviours were the Turks, the Mamelukes in Egypt and later the Ottomans who eventually linked Cairo with Constantinople. Within ten years of the fall of Baghdad the Mongols were either destroyed or assimilated; and within another 25 the last Crusader stronghold had fallen. History, of course, does not repeat itself although it has been accused of imitation.
Pride in the past will not determine the course of events in this century, but, as James Woolsey predicted, it could be a long Fourth World War. Listen to the voices.
Craig Smith of the New York Times was in Karbala, to see Shia passion during the first Muharram after liberation from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. A white-turbaned Sheikh Muhammad Thamer told him on April 21, 2003: ‘Our celebration (at release from Saddam) will be perfect only when the American occupier is gone and the Iraqi people are able to rule themselves by the principles of Islam.’ Sheikh Tamer is deputy to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sestani. An unnamed chanter in the procession told the reporter: ‘The Americans are not our enemy, but they are not our friend. We want an Islamic state and we need to see that the Americans intend to leave our country.’
Sunni voices to the east of Iran had a similar message for Carlotta Gall of the same paper a fortnight later (her story appeared in the International Herald Tribune of May 7, 2003 under the headline ‘Taliban gather openly in Pakistan and talk of return’). She was told by 26-year-old Abdul Karim, a Taliban: ‘We don’t like the Americans, and Karzai is a puppet of George W. Bush.... We want an Islamic government in Afghanistan.’
It is not important that every Muslim believes that this is true. But war is fought by believers, whether in Washington or on the Muslim street. George Bush has multiplied the number of Muslims who believe in jihad. For such Muslims this jihad will end only when they are convinced that their lands have been rid of American domination and are truly Dar ul-Islam again.
In 1899 Teddy Roosevelt won the Spanish-American war, liberated Cuba and got the Philippines for his country as a bonus. Rudyard Kipling, poet of the British Empire, had been urging the American President to take up the white man’s burden, since he suspected that the shoulders of his own country’s imperialists were beginning to sag a bit. That burden was heavier than it seemed. When Philippines guerillas of Squinaldo fought back American troops, the New York World published a ditty:
We’ve taken up the white man’s burden
Of ebony and brown;
Now will you tell us, Rudyard
How we may put it down?
That’s always the difficult part, isn’t it?
Excerpted with permission from
The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity
By M. J. Akbar
Roli Books, M-75, G.K. II Market, New Delhi-110 048
Email: roli@vsnl.com Website:
www.rolibooks.com
ISBN 81-7436-291-6
404pp. Indian Rs350
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