Beyond Ben Laden
AghA Bozorg
Sunday September 23, 2001
The Observer
Events of the past week have underlined both the importance and pitfalls
that beset discussion of international affairs. All areas of political and
social life involve controversy and commitment: this is as true of debates
on the family, the role of the state in the economy, education and the
causes of crime. But in no area of public discussion is there as high a dose
of posturing, misinformation and irrationality as that of international
issues.
There are, in broad terms, two conventional stances that arise in regard to
international issues - complacency disguised as realism and irresponsibility
posing as conscience. These poles have been evident in regard to the major
cases of humanitarian intervention in the 1990s (Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo) and
are present in much of the debate on the causes of globalisation and world
inequality. They are present in very specific form in the question of what
can be the future political system in Afghanistan.
For hard-headed realism, the international is a domain of power, mistrust
and recurrence of conflict. This is the way the world, or God, or the market
make it, and there is not much you can do. The most dangerous people are the
do-gooders who make a mess of things by trying to make the world a better
place: foreign aid, human rights, a lowering of the security guard, let
alone education in global issues, are all doomed to failure.
Last week, in a typical realist calumny, one that allows legitimate
international action only to states, President Bush cast responsibility for
the terror attacks on, among others, NGOs (he had to spell out that this
meant 'non-governmental organisations'). More ominous are the voices, now
pushing a realist agenda, that were already under starter's orders on the
morning of 11 September and are now in full canter: identity cards,
immigration controls, National Missile Defence. In the field of cultural
speculation, the great winner has been the theory, first espoused by Samuel
Huntington in 1993, that says we are entering an epoch that will be
dominated by 'the Clash of Civilisations'.
The alternative view to realism has its own, equally simplistic, answers.
This assumes that there is a straightforward, benign way of resolving the
world's problems and that there is one, identifiable and single, cause of
what is wrong. Two centuries ago, the cause was monarchy and absolutism,
then branded as the cause of poverty, ignorance and war; over the past two
centuries, it has been capitalism and imperialism; now it is globalisation.
More specifically, the USA is held responsible for the ills of the world -
global inequality, neglect of human rights, militarism, cultural decay. It
is not always clear what the 'America' so responsible is - this Bush
administration, all US administrations, the whole of 'corporate' America,
Hollywood or, in the implication of 11 September, the whole of the American
people and, indeed, all who choose to work with, or visit, or in anyway find
themselves in the proximity of such people.
Both of these positions are, perhaps, caricatures, yet the themes they
encompass are evident, and will be even more evident, in the crisis that has
engulfed the world. There are, however, some core issues where, perhaps, an
element of reason about international affairs may be sustainable.
First, history: much is made of the antecedents. Some involve the Crusades,
others jihad, but the image of the Crusades means little to those outside
the Mediterranean Arab world; jihad is quite an inappropriate term for the
proper, Koranic, reason that the armies of Islam sought to convert those who
conquered to Islam.
As for the Cold War, it has contributed its mite to this crisis and, in
particular, to the destruction of Afghanistan but in a way that should give
comfort to few. One can here suggest a 'two dustbins' theory' of Cold War
legacy: if the Soviet system has left a mass of uncontrolled nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons, and unresolved ethnic problems, the West
has bequeathed a bevy of murderous gangs, from Unita in Angola to the
Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
A second issue that is present is that of culture. It takes two to have a
'Clash of Civilisations' and there are those on both sides who are using the
present conflict to promote it. Huntington's theory misses what is the most
important cause of the events of recent days, and which will define the
consequences in the Muslim world of what is to come, namely the enormous
clash within the Muslim world between those who want to reform, and
secularise, and those whose power is threatened, or who want to take power
in the name of fundamentalism. This has been the basis of the conflicts
going on these past decades in Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Turkey and, most
violently of all, Afghanistan.
Religious fundamentalists in all societies have one goal: it is not to
convert other people to their beliefs, but to seize power - political,
social and gendered - within their own societies. Their greatest foe is
secularism.
The third and , arguably, most important and difficult issue underlying the
crisis is that of the most effective and just way to combine the two
instruments of international politics - force and diplomacy. Under
international law, states are entitled to use force in self-defence. An
element of retribution is part of any legal system, domestic or
international. The UN is not some pacifist, supranational last resort, but a
body which, in its charter and in the Security Council resolution 1368 of 12
September, has authorised military action by states in this case.
At the same time, any use of force, in the immediate future or in the longer
conflict promised by both sides, has to be matched by diplomatic and
political initiative. This can cover each of the separate issues that make
up the greater west Asian crisis underlying these events, from Kashmir to
Palestine, and on to Kosovo, but it must, above all, address the future of
Afghanistan itself.
Here, the UN has, since 1993, been on record, and with the support of all
the Permanent Members of the Security Council and all the neighbouring
states, in calling for the setting up of a new government. The UN has
insisted that this be broadly based, fully representative, multi-ethnic and
opposed to terrorism. This is a goal which the current crisis requires and
brings closer to view. It is also one which, it is generally agreed, the
great majority of Afghans would support.
Freud once argued that the aim of psychoanalysis was to reduce extreme
hysteria to everyday common misery. The function of reasoned argument, and
an engaged scepticism, in international affairs is to do just that.
Fred Halliday is professor of international relations at the LSE and the
author of The World at 2000