Non-Static

[Annie]

Links at site.

http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=713

Fascinating questions. AINA (an Assyrian Christian website) publishes an essay by Saudi journalist Mshari Al-Zaydi opinion page editor of Asharq Al-Awsat) which discusses the Iraqi context, with an eye on the trend toward realism Al-Zaydi has seen among Egyptian radicals.

Three key grafs, beginning with a comment about Zarqawi:

The horizon of the political dreamers is always limited and overtaken by reality. We may be surprised one day to find that Al Zarqawi has developed shades of grey as politics does, but will he be able to shed the rivers of blood that he has caused that will eventually drown him?

There are many examples that reassure that the final victory will belong to the realists. We have seen the transformation of viewpoint in the leader of Jihadist groups in Egypt, Abud Al Zumur. Al Zumur was imprisoned for over 25 years for the assassination of President Sadat and rejected all the juridical reviews of the Islamist Jihadist revisionist (who moderated their radicalism), but eventually issued a statement calling for the support of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian general elections. This means that after 25 years of rejection, he finally acknowledged the political means that he had previously described as pagan such as elections and representation in parliament. He finally got rid of such delusions bringing him to reality. Last August he issued a statement that encouraged Egyptian political parties not to boycott the presidential elections. He stated that the opposition should unite behind a single candidate to push for the desired change. Indeed, such is a new language that differs greatly to that used by the author of the ‘Missing Religious Obligation,’ Mohamed Abdel Salam Farag, Abud’s former colleague, and the religious ideologue of the group that killed Sadat. Maybe one day Al-Zawahiri will also renounce his language.

Even the Muslim Brotherhood, who see themselves as the pioneers of cultural-political resistance of the Crusading West, by employing notions such as the cultural invasion, cultural and political dependency from the ruling regimes of the West, and the maintenance of the Ummah’s identity, have now started to mitigate its hostile language towards the United States. One must however highlight the word mitigate as to eliminate such language altogether would be political suicide. We now hear the general guide of the Brothers in Syria, Ali Sadr Addin Al Bayanouni, in response to a question about dialogue with the United States saying, “We will happily meet any party and clarify our views and positions.”​

As for Western realists and the US. The Economist sees the phenomenon I’ve mentioned several times since late 2004, undermining of entrenched myths in the Middle East. This is a round-about acknowledgement that the US grand strategy of fighting Salafist terrorism’s “root causes on its home turf” is winning. When I pointed out (November 13) that Zarqawi’s attacks in Jordan were a political and information victory for the US, there were doubters. Setting your enemy up to make mistakes –then taking advantage of his mistakes– is an old stroke in the terrible art of war.

The Economist:

The undermining of entrenched myths is a slow and halting process. But it is subject to sudden, shattering jolts, such as the November 9th suicide bombing of three hotels in the Jordanian capital, Amman. In the minds of the killers, American-allied Jordan had become a rear base for the “crusader” invaders of Iraq, and so its hotels, the sort of places where crusaders and their minions congregate, were legitimate targets for the resistance.

Yet it is perhaps more than incidentally ironic that among the 60 people they killed was Mustapha Akkad, the Syrian-born director who created “Lion of the Desert”. His film, glorifying the bravery of Muslim resistance fighters, happened to be one of the few productions explicitly endorsed on jihadist websites, albeit in a version that replaced the musical soundtrack with religious chants, and cut out all scenes showing women.

The global al-Qaeda franchise, whose Iraqi branch claimed responsibility for the Amman atrocity, has scored many own-goals over the years. The carnage in such Muslim cities as Istanbul, Casablanca, Sharm el-Sheikh and Riyadh has alienated the very Muslim masses the jihadists claim to be serving. By bringing home the human cost of such violence, they have even stripped away the shameful complacency with which the Sunni Muslim majority in other Arab countries has tended to regard attacks by Iraq’s Sunni insurgent “heroes” against “collaborationist” Shia mosque congregations, funeral processions and police stations.

In Amman, al-Qaeda’s victims included not only Mr Akkad and his daughter Rima, a mother of two, but also dozens of guests at a Palestinian wedding. The slaughter of so many innocents, nearly all of them Sunni Muslims, in the heart of a peaceful Arab capital, inspired a region-wide wave of revulsion. Far from being perceived now as a sort of Muslim Braveheart, the man who planned the attack, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may be the most reviled person in Jordan, the country of his birth.​

The Economist adds:

The direct impact of tragedy has not been the only impetus for change. Arab governments used to treat local terrorism as something that dented their prestige and should be covered up. Now they eagerly exploit the images of suffering to justify their policies. The way such events are reported in the press no longer hints at a reflexive blaming of external forces. The Arab commentariat, much of which had promoted sympathy with the Iraqi insurgency, and focused on perceived western hostility to Islam as the cause of global jihadism, has grown vocal in condemning violence. Jihad al-Khazen, the editor of al-Hayat, a highbrow Saudi daily, is a frequent and mordant critic of western policy. Yet his response to the Amman tragedy was an unequivocal call for global co-operation to combat what he blasted as the enemies of life, of joy, and of the light of day.

Popular culture, too, has begun to reflect such shifts in attitude. Recently, during the peak television season of Ramadan, satellite channels watched by millions across the region broadcast several serials dramatising the human toll of jihadist violence. One of these contrasted the lives of ordinary Arab families, living in a housing compound in Riyadh, with a cartoonish view of the terrorists who eventually attack them. Another serial focused, with eerie foresight, on a group of jihadist assassins in Amman. Their plot to murder a television producer who is critical of their methods goes awry, killing three children instead. Unusually for an Arabic-language serial, even the villains are presented as conflicted souls, alienated from society and misled by dreams of glory and heavenly reward.

Religious leaders have chipped in. Moderate Muslim clerics have grown increasingly concerned at the abuse of religion to justify killing. In Saudi Arabia, numerous preachers once famed for their fighting words now advise tolerance and restraint. Even so rigid a defender of suicide attacks against Israel (on the grounds that all of Israeli society is militarised) as Yusuf Qaradawi, the star preacher of the popular al-Jazeera satellite channel, denounces bombings elsewhere and calls on the perpetrators to repent.[/ident]

The irony: as a political-cultural victory nears, American neo-isolationists demand retreat.

UPDATE: See this new blog post on potential negotiations with Sunni holdouts in Iraq’s Al Anbar province. The AP report is unconfirmed but interesting. Consider it in light of The Economist article.

UPDATE 2: Comment 1 makes a very important point. Consider the ISF in Algeria’s elections. Iraq differs from both Algeria and Egypt. In Iraq Salafist and old-line fascist terror are being defeated, militarily and politically. Iraqis also have political options. However, the corruption of Algeria’s government should serve as a reminder that bribery and crime are destructive acids. The ISF had a reformist pitch.

From the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin website (a post from May 2001)–take the site with a grain of salt but the December 1991 election data is accurate:

But when the ISF won a landslide victory in the first round of voting in December, the military ended Algeria’s brief experiment with democracy. On January 12, 1992, just days before the second round of elections were expected to hand the FIS another landslide victory, the Algerian High Security Council, headed by Gen. Khaled Nezzar and Gen. Larbi Belkheir, canceled the elections, forced Benjedid’s resignation, and arrested ISF leader Abdelkadir Hachani and over 500 other ISF activists. The state of emergency established by the military junta remains in effect to this day. While a veneer of civilian political governance was soon reinstated, the military has remained in power behind the scenes.​

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