False spectre of global jihad

Boko Haram, an insurgency group in northern Nigeria declares its loyalty to Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), another insurgency group in northern parts of Syria and Iraq. There are reports that individuals in that part of Africa who look to ISIS as the “caliphate” could now join Boko Haram and feel that they are part of a re-emergent Muslim empire.  There are also the isolated examples of individuals from Libya, Tunisia and Egypt joining the fighting forces of ISIL. The Western media were quick to see these as signs of the emergence of a global jihadi network. 

But Western governments and intelligence agencies have been guarded in their response this time round because they seem to realise that the rhetoric of global jihad has outlived its utility. The Americans are willing to let the Nigerian government deal with Boko Haram, and the Iraqi government to fight the ISIL in Tikrit. ISIL’s decapitation of Western hostages was indeed a provocation but no Western armies are going to be put on the field to eliminate the ISIL. US Secretary of State John Kerry is even talking of negotiating with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. At the other end, the Americans are encouraging the Afghan government to negotiate with the Taliban. It is realpolitik at play in its classical sense of power games.

The West’s fight against global jihad has been on for 14 years now, starting with the United States-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001 in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington. The intention was to “smoke out” al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was considered the mastermind behind the attacks and who had declared war against the US with the definite and limited aim of evacuating the American military from Saudi Arabia. The Taliban regime which came to power in Kabul in 1996 was caught in the cross hairs of the Laden-US quarrel. The Americans pretended to condemn the puritanical frenzy of the Afghan Islamists but they were not disposed or determined to overthrow the regime as they were in the case of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It took a decade for the Americans to get at Laden, and it was done through a covert operation and not through a formal war.

Apart from posturing, the US, the United Kingdom, the loyal junior ally of the US, and France, which is a little more sure-footed in dealing with the extremists on ideological terms, have been fighting the spectre of global jihad where there was none. Unfortunately, India’s right-wingers as well as some well-meaning liberals feel that Islamic extremists shouting “jihad” threaten civilisation as we know it.  The only war against global jihad that has ever been fought had been in Afghanistan, and it was not allowed to spill over into the neighbouring countries of Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. The 2003 Iraq war led by the US and its European allies which ended in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein does not qualify to be part of the anti-global jihad offensive.

The ISIL had emerged in the border regions of Syria and Iraq because of local sectarian rivalries. The ISIL is a desperate attempt by a small section of majority Sunnis in Syria and the minority Sunnis in Iraq to retrieve their political clout. The ISIL rhetoric of the caliphate does not carry conviction because then it will have to contend with the other Sunni governments of the Arab Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia. The ISIL does not have the men or materials to overrun even the Arab peninsula. The Nusra Front, a supposedly al Qaeda group in Syria, has not yet declared its position with regard to ISIS. Boko Haram in northern Nigeria is a product of the economic distress in that part of country and the Islamist rhetoric is nothing but hot air. The acts of violence they perpetrate would have been committed anyway because that is what desperadoes do. The jihadi conflict zones are localised in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Nigeria.

Many of the Syrians do want to see the end of the antiquated authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad and his Ba’ath Party with its dead socialistic baggage. But they would not be willing to exchange it for the ISIL. The anti-Assad rebel groups are now being swamped by the local Islamist militias. It is a battle between several Syrian groups and it has no meaning beyond the country’s borders, not even in neighbouring Turkey.

Western media, and following them the Indian media, have played an insidious role in spreading the message of the horrors perpetrated by the ostensible jihadis. In this propaganda war, modern Muslims all over the world, and especially those living in the West, had either to go into unconvincing exegesis of the real meaning of “jihad” or point a finger at Israel and the problem of Palestine. It is futile on the part of Muslims to deny the criminal acts of the al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIS, and other splinter groups like the al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM) and the al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), against fellow Muslims on the pretext of imposing strict religious codes. What Muslims will have to decide is whether they give assent to any kind of tyranny and authoritarianism in the name of the Quran and the Prophet. Muslims have walked into the propaganda trap set by the Western governments and media.

Egyptian stand-up comedians have been ripping the ISIL with their razor sharp satire. CNN’s Christianne Amanpour made a feeble attempt to draw a distinction between “our world” (the West) and “your part of the world” (Egypt, Arab, Muslim) while quizzing Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef. Bassem was amused because satire is part of the Egyptian DNA and it is ingrained in the Arab culture of West Asia. Amanpour showed clips of an Egyptian YouTube clip showing a father dropping his daughter off with the ISIL men and them assuring him they will take care of her. It is the kind of robust humour that Westerners would consider insensitive and offensive.

The West’s need for a constant adversary is pathological. The Cold War was a gargantuan military make-believe of an ideological Armageddon confronting the communist enemy. It never happened. The West then invented this mortal combat with the imagined anti-modern, anti-liberal Islam. The grand coalitions were indeed forged but there were no big wars. There have been countless local flare-ups instead. The Western knights-errant have been tilting at windmills and it is the ordinary Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians who have paid with their lives for the juvenile acts of the Don Quixotes from the US, UK, France and other Western lands. 

The author is a consulting editor with dna