The former Dutch prime minister, Ruud Lubbers, says his government knew that Dr A Q Khan was “stealing” nuclear secrets in the early 1970s. But the CIA advised against indicting the scientist because “we were in the middle of the Cold War”. This brief statement explains the relationship between US foreign policy, the Cold War, democracy, dictatorship and the roots of modern Islamic extremism.
Mohammad Mosaddeq is Iranian modern history’s most famous champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination. In 1951 he nationalized the country’s British-controlled oil industry and provoked a confrontation with Britain. Two years later the CIA sponsored a successful coup against him. This initiated a 25 year period of absolute pro-US dictatorship by the Shah, leaving an anti-US legacy and paving the way for Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution. Thus the modern confrontation between Iran and the US today is rooted in past US foreign policies.
In 1932 the British helped Abd al Aziz ibn Saud to become absolute monarch of the Arabian peninsula. Subsequently, the Saudis clinched two self-sustaining deals for survival and longevity: an external one with the Americans – cheap oil in exchange for military and political support; and an internal one with the Wahhabis in which they could preach, practice and export radical Islam but not challenge al-Saud’s political supremacy. Thus Osama bin Laden’s exhortation to end the long and unholy alliance between the US and the Saudi monarchy.
In Egypt, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1952 and provoked Britain. His pro-Soviet stance antagonized the US. After Egypt was defeated by Israel, the US protégé in the Middle East, his successor Anwar Sadaat suppressed the liberal, secular, and democratic forces, mollycoddled the Ikhwan al-Muslimin which opposed Nasserite secularism, and Islamised the institutions of the state. But the Islamists perceived Camp David as a great betrayal and assassinated Sadaat. His pro-US successor Hosni Mobarik suppressed the radical Islamists but did not democratize or secularise the state. Therein lay the seeds of the Islamic revolt engineered by Sayyid Qutb and Ayman al-Zawahiri which eventually linked up with OBL to become Al-Qaeda.
In Iraq, the US befriended the secular dictator Saddam Hussain and nudged him in 1980 to wage war with Shiite Iran for eight years. But after the USSR vanished, the US decided to bomb Iraq in 1991. When Saddam survived, 9/11 provided the pretext for a full fledged invasion. This has unleashed all the sectarian demons of the region without securing and guaranteeing Iraqi oil for the US.
In Pakistan, the religious parties were long nurtured by Saudi funding while the military became an American surrogate in the war against communism. In the 1980s Gen Zia ul Haq assailed the secular institutions of the state and launched the “Islamic jihad” in Afghanistan jointly with the CIA and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. But after the USSR folded in 1989, the US lost interest in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In this era of neglect, the military’s “Islamic jihad” was retuned with the help of the religious parties and lashkars to “liberate” Kabul from local communists and Kashmir from arch-enemy India. In 1995, the Taliban were launched and Pakistan became a stepping stone to the base area of world jihad in Afghanistan. Fortunately for Pakistan, though, when 9/11 inevitably dawned, General Musharraf chose to ditch the Taliban and mollify Washington.
The US handiwork is cracking in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. If America exits from Iraq without sufficiently democratizing and secularizing the country, it will enshrine a non-viable Shiite, pro-Iran state pitted against a violent Sunni minority and tempt intervention by secular Turkey, Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. But maintaining the status quo means losing more American lives and breeding “globalised Islamic terror”. If America bombs Iran’s nuclear installations, it risks inflaming global Islamic passions. If it doesn’t, Iran will acquire nuclear weapons and “Western civilization” will have to contend with not one but two “Islamic bombs” and live with the fear of proliferation. In Saudi Arabia, if America pushes for greater democratization, the Wahhabi hardliners will seize power. But if it nudges the Al-Saud to crack down on the Wahhabis, it risks a violent terror backlash that could transform Saudi Arabia into another Iraq. The same sort of scenario exists in Egypt where the liberal secular forces have been snuffed out by Mobarik and the thought of what happens after him is deeply disturbing.
Pakistan is less unfortunate. The country is awash with anti-Americanism and Al-Qaedaism. But the military and the Islamists are not yet the only political forces to reckon with and choose from. There remains a strong non-Islamic (not non-religious) democratic sentiment in the country which would trounce its military-mullah detractors in any free and fair election and turn back the tide of radical Islam. Thus, despite their dictatorships, Egypt’s embedded political weakness is Pakistan’s lingering political strength. But for how long can these political forces escape emasculation at the hands of a military armed with nuclear weapons, imbued with Islamic nationalism, wedded to regional ambitions and propped up by the US?