Nationalism and Fundamentalism

There is an ancient Persian proverb which says, "When a Shah goes mad he goes to fight in the Caucasus." Putin’s ignorance is not confined to proverbial wisdom, though. Putin is taking the wrong approach to the Caucasus (i.e. Ossetia and Chechnya). He has refused to familiarize himself with the consequences of nationalism - not simply "terrorism" - in the Caucasus.

Putin is actually dealing with terrorism and crime, which are symptoms of nationalism and religious fundamentalism. Terrorism and crime are entirely different than nationalism and religious fundamentalism. In the political landscape of Chechnya, it seems that nationalism and radical religion have come to compete and overlap as they have in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If we examine the region’s history, it is clear that nationalism has been a source of power in the Caucasus since the 18th century. The Chechens defended against Czarist imperial expansion from 1818. After 1917, they struggled against the Bolsheviks. They rose again when the German offensive reached Chechnya in 1942, and in revenge Stalin - himself from the Caucasus - deported many to Central Asia.

Putin renewed his war against the Chechens to win votes, in Russia’s last election. However, Chechen terrorism undermined Putin’s quest for victory; though he ultimately won. A theme of his campaign was security, that he was fighting the good fight against the “terrorists” in Chechnya to keep Russia safe. It reminds me of the Presidential Election in the US in 2004. Another parallel between Bush and Putin can be drawn here. Putin’s handling of the Caucasus is of a similar sort to how Bush has handled both Afghanistan and Iraq in his “War on Terror”. In Iraq, the Bush administration made a gift of Iraqi nationalism to the Islamic fundamentalists. Without nationalism, the fundamentalist cause is weak.

There is a tie between nationalism and fundamentalism. In Iraq, as other places, the goal of jihad is to reconstruct the fundamentalist intellectuals' romanticized notion of medieval Islamic society. Recovering a “golden age” is a thought that persists in developing societies dealing with the crises of development. A part of society, usually young, often Western-educated and from privileged circumstances, experiences a puritan reaction against the prevailing materialism, moral disarray, extravagance, and corruption that it sees in the West.

This is a common phenomenon. The "Maoist" terrorists of Western Europe in the 1970s and early 1980s included daughters of pastors and former seminarians, who were motivated by their moral outrage against capitalism. Young Muslims, who mobilized to fight Russian hostility, in Afghanistan moved on to fight corruption and heresy elsewhere in other areas including North Africa and the Balkans. However, the people in those countries resisted them. Just as in the case of Europe's "Maoists," the radicalized young had believed that ordinary people were ready for revolution, and were misguided. The next step for the radical Islamic Fundamentalists, when the people won't follow, is terrorism: terrible violence meant to awaken Muslims to the “truth”, and to bring the wrath of God on them.

That brings us to Al Qaeda. Fundamentalism and nationalism were parallel forces at work in the Caucasus and the Middle East well before the new fundamentalists came home from Afghanistan. Nationalism, with terrorism being a method of this madness, motivated the Zionists' war against the Palestinians and the British before Israel was created. Palestinian terrorism has been part of the conflict with Israel ever since. I am not sure what Washington thought it was doing - and there seems to have been little responsible thought about what it was doing - it made a basic error by declaring a "War on Terror" after the Sept. 11 attacks and then attacking the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and invading Iraq. It created the circumstances in which nationalism and "terrorism" are now in perpetual war with the United States.

The Iraq insurgency’s essential motivation is nationalism. Sooner or later, the United States will be forced out of Iraq. Nationalism has been the most important force in modern history; it has resisted and outlasted all totalitarianisms. Nationalism finds a fond bedfellow with religious fundamentalism, as they are both ways to affirm identity. It makes use of terrorism, because this is the weapon of the weak. Ultimately, terrorism is a symptom of nationalism. On balance, what has driven U.S. policy since Sept. 11, 2001, if not teeth gnashing nationalism?

Israel and Lebanon: An Analysis of the Current Crisis

I am writing this to offer a different perspective on current events in the Middle East. It is a different perspective than what you might get in the US media.

The current strategy involves trying to impose a democracy in the Middle East as a means to effectively preempt future terrorist activity in the region and globally. I understand the Bush administration's argument, but the way in which this fools errand has played out, has proven that intervention, at least in this case, is not an effective method to bring about democracy. I share common ground with the Bush administration in that I believe that democracy is an effective medicine for terrorism. However, I don't agree with their stance on how to bring a country to democracy.

There is a scholar of International Relations, who teaches at Harvard, named Michael Walzer. Walzer is best known for his work in the "Communitarian" political theory. Walzer's work teaches us that one cannot impose democracy/social change on a people of a given society. Change comes from within. The change must come from internal social movements. The transition from one form of government to another is a matter of process through which a given society transcends. It is the role of the social critic, within that society, to prod society toward progress. Thus, he argues that intervention is not the answer. Rather, we should let democracy come about on its own through the natural internal processes of the country.

As scholars predicted in 2003, the consequence of our intervention in Iraq has caused instability in the Middle East. They predicted that given the history of ethnic conflict in Iraq, which can be traced to the drawing of the map by the West to serve their interests, that the power vacuum left by Saddam would cause a civil war there. This would then bleed over into a regional war. Well, we are seeing this scenario play out, today. It would be a hard sell to try and claim that Iraq is not in the midst of a Civil War.

In another part of the region, we have Syria and Iran supporting Hizballah in their attacks on Israel. Though, this regional war has not gotten as bad as it will get, if things don’t change course. If Iran enters Iraq to support the Shiites, then Turkey will enter from the North to balance Iran’s power, support the Sunni’s (most of Turkey is Sunni Arab), and fight the Kurds, who are launching attacks on them from the North of Iraq.

I blame Syria and Iran for all of this. They are cowards. They do not have the courage to face Israel, themselves. So, they do it on the expense of other countries. The Lebanese have nothing to do with this and now they are losing their country. Israel is decimating their infrastructure and using the argument that the infrastructure supports the terrorist’s ability to execute military objectives that are aimed at Israel.

To some extent they have a point. From a military perspective, infrastructure is the first thing you target, as it limits your enemies ability to launch an effective counterattack. However, Israel knows that this is mainly affecting the civilian population, who has nothing to do with this conflict, save for empathizing with the terrorists.

The Lebanese government does not have the capacity to do anything about Hizballah; it has no force. For years, their army was Syria. Lebanon could not get rid of the Syrian army. So, the US and UN had to intervene and force Syria to leave. This has had the effect of allowing Iran to pass weapons to Hizballah.

The leaders in this conflict are deserving casualties of this crisis. Let them burn, but the civilians are really the victims here. The net effect of Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon is to breed further hatred and resentment among the Lebanese populace, who are now even more likely to support Hizballah. So, the irony is that while Israel believes that it is weakening Hizballah with its bombing, they are actually strengthening them.

Lebanon's entire infrastructure - Airport, Bridges, Major Highways, Power Plants, Sewage systems – that they have been building for 15 years, after the Civil War is being decimated. Israel knows that this is affecting the civilians most, yet they continue their campaign. We should not be surprised, given Israel’s 58 year track record in the region. It is a history of bombing civilians and putting Palestinians in camps. It is a history of blocking freedom of movement to the Palestinians. It is a history of oppression that can be summed up in one word: Apartheid.

The creation of Israel in 1948 brought with it the so-called “refugee problem”. Many Palestinians were forced off of their land and became refugees in the rest of the Arab world. Palestinian refugees now comprise about 70% of Jordan’s populace and a sizable percentage of many Arab countries, including Libya.

The refugee problem could be solved if the Arab countries currently hosting these refugees would just naturalize the Palestinians and the Israelis would compensate the Palestinians for their losses. Israel repatriated the Jews that were scattered throughout the region. The Arabs just haven't naturalized the Palestinians. This is strategic. It is so that they can have a carrot in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They are using the refugee problem as a means to advance their political agenda. They don't care about the Palestinians. They care about using them as a weapon against Israel. If the Arabs were more united in their thinking, the Arab-Israeli conflict would have been over a long time ago.

A reason that the Arab-Israeli conflict continues is due to the fact that there is no democracy in the Arab Countries of the Middle East. The Arab leaders do not represent their people; they represent their own interests. They are in power by virtue of Western sanction. The West allows these dictators to remain in power as long as they can control their populations and continue to allow the West to have access to their resources. This dynamic, interestingly enough, serves the interests of Israel. If the Arab leaders were to serve the interests of their people, they would start to think strategically about how to unite against Israel. The Arab leaders are too myopic to realize that by seeking their own narrow-sighted agenda, they are missing an opportunity to gain strategic leverage against Israel, by compromising with other Arab leaders in a unified front against Israel.

If Arab leaders change to truly represent their people, Israel’s days would be numbered. The US occupation would not exist, either. This is also part of the reason why it is in the interest of the West to have self serving leaders in the Middle East, who report to us and not their people. Arab leaders use religion as a means to control their people. They wait for what the US says and follow suit. Bush blamed Hizballah and after the official word came from the US, the Saudi Foreign Minister said the same thing.

The West doesn't want democracy in the region, because it would lose its current influence. When there were democratic elections in Gaza, Hamas - itself labeled a "terrorist" organization by the West - was elected. This is what democracy yielded: a challenge to the status quo, which represents a challenge to US hegemony in the region.

From the Arab/Islamic perspective, I understand that an Iraqi fighting the US in Afghanistan, Somalia, or Iraq – anywhere for that matter – is considered a hero and is supported financially and emotionally by most Muslims/Arabs. On the other side of the coin, the US labels the guy a terrorist. So, saying that Saudi Arabia funds terrorism is only one side of the coin. From the West’s perspective these fighters are terrorists, because they are those people who are resisting Western control of the region. The "terrorists" use violence, because this is the language that the militaristic US understand.

The intelligent way to examine things is to approach them from both sides of the coin. Then one can really understand the problem, on a systemic level. They are just two different perspectives on the same problem, when you get to the root cause of the violence. So, when someone says “Does Saudi Arabia support terrorism?” the question is somewhat wrong. If you really want to understand the problem perfectly, you need to recognize that there are two sides in a conflict that is occurring right now. On the one hand, you have the West, Israel, and the Arab Leaders as representatives of Western interests. On the other side, you have the people of the Arab countries and mostly the Middle East. If you see the news, people are fighting with their governments violently in most parts of the Middle East. Those people want to fight the US and Israel, because they view these entities as their enemy. So, they do it by any means necessary. These are the roots of Muslim rage in the Middle East.

So, when we saw 9/11, these were not terrorists who hate USA. There is an undeclared war occurring, but how can you have declared war when you do not have a country you are fighting? You cannot say USA vs. Islamic world; this would be non-sense. So, this undeclared war is happening, very slowly. The news that we get in the American Media is distorted. It is also presented to the people of the Middle East in a distorted manner. So, both sides of the conflict are sold an image of what is really going on, but neither sees a clear picture. Thus, it creates a continual state of conflict.

With that in mind, the US government and its people are two very different beasts. The same is the case with regard to the people of the Middle East and their leaders. American people are not informed on the issues and they are generally opposed to any kind of violence. They do not support any kind of invasions, but their government does and that is what creates the problem. The people who do support this invasion do not understand the full picture. They support something and yet they do not really know what it is. They label it as “good”.

Sadly, with the American electorate, who is largely undereducated, there is a tendency to think in terms of good vs. bad – moral absolutes. There is no room for gray in their minds, just black and white. They don’t think critically, which was the sine non qua for the democracy to work in Jefferson’s idea of democracy. We have people voting when they don’t understand the issues. With fear, media, money, you can make people believe you. Hitler used to say, "Lie, lie, lie until they believe you."

Who benefits from this situation? Well, the governments of the West, Israel, and Arab countries do. Another beneficiary is corporations such as Halliburton, which has seen its share price double over the 5 year period since 9/11, have done well. Oil companies have also benefited. Our gas prices have risen since 2003 and this is partially due to the instability in the region (Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the World). It is hard not to see increased prices at the pump along side record oil company profits as suspect.

One argument that has been made was that the goal of Bush was to take the budget surplus and plow it back into private hands and that the war was an effective mechanism for doing this. Bush basically, rewarded his winning coalition, with war contracts. Those who "invested" in his campaign were compensated with lucrative war contracts.

But the real problem is that Arabs and Muslims don’t know this. They think the US people are against them. From their perspective, they think that “the US is a very democratic country and that if they invade a certain country, then that means that they all agree on this. So, we will fight them all.” This is a failure of communication, a failure of understanding. But when you get an Arab/Muslim, who has never had any exposure to the West, they see the destroyed building and dead bodies and declare war on the US in any way possible, such as 9/11.

Given the situation in the Middle East, a large percentage of the people there are easily manipulated. The people of the Middle East are malleable in that they can be easily influenced by the religious leaders to believe certain things about the US. Some do not need religious leaders, because they already have rage, due to their general discontent with the current system. If the religious leaders think it is so great to have 27 virgins, or whatever, if you are a suicide bomber, then they should go and do it. They manipulate these kids, but it is not very difficult, because these kids are already convinced. These kids travel miles to get to a place where they can be prepared for it, because they don't understand that all Americans don't hate them. When 9/11 happened, people celebrated in Palestine, because they thought those who they were fighting were bombed.

In Middle East society, wealth is concentrated in the few hands of the ruling elite, which leaves many peasants. It is the segment of society that can’t afford to travel to the US or send their kids to the best schools that thinks this way and is most likely to go and fight against the US. I am interested in the social causes of dictatorship and democracy, in other words how different groups in society act with respect to their governments and foreign governments. What I see here is the serf class at war with the international bourgeoisie. No one can stop the US except itself and the people here will do that one day. No one can go on and on doing this; one day the people will just get sick of it. I hope this day comes soon.