Of all the extremist movements I have studied, from the ultra-religious Right to neo-Nazism, none has shown such talent at strategic subterfuge as Islamists. They know better than anyone how to instrumentalise democracy to promote anti-democratic views — or how to be victims of “islamophobia” while radicalising the muslim youth of Europe, convincing them that they would be happier in the shadow of a caliphate, rather than in secular democracies.
In Europe, defeating political Islamism will be a long and gruelling process. But in the Middle East, it will take even longer — and will have to reach beyond military interventions.
Of course, the American intervention in Iraq has not completely failed. Life for ordinary Iraqis in the Kurdish north is no longer the procession of massacres and executions that it was under Saddam Hussein.
But while they are freed from daily terror, Iraqi communities continue to eye each other with suspicion and bitterness. Some Sunnis continue to perceive ISIS as a form of protection against a government under the influence of Iran, which now arms Shia militias in the country’s many disputed areas.
The country continues to smoulder and the “Lebanonisation” of Iraq — its disintegration — remains a possibility, with the tiniest spark capable of enflaming the Sunni community once again to support a revived jihadist movement. Just like the Taliban in Afghanistan, ISIS is waiting patiently on the sideline for the Americans to depart. Such an outcome would prove to be the final failure of American policy in the Middle East.
So is the era of Western “interference” dead?
Here, a distinction can and should be made between a neoconservative vision of values being inflicted by force and our duty to care about what is happening in the rest of the world. It is, after all, possible to support democracy without wishing to impose it from above by military means. Indeed, during President Macron’s visit to Iraq late last month, he specifically made this distinction and called for a new approach which he called “neither interference, nor indifference”.
It is unacceptable to undermine a country which poses no immediate threat to the rest of the world, nor has genocidal plans for its own people. But it is “indifference” to allow tyrants to thrive — first in their own countries, then globally.
For as more democratic — and “indifferent” — countries retreat, the more influence they abandon to authoritarian regimes such as Russia, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran. These states have their own methods of interference, which have nothing to do with democracy or the desire to install democratic regimes. Quite the contrary; they are ruled by tyrants and dictators who see no problem with manipulating other countries with social media trolls and authoritarian state media outlets such as RT.
Now that Afghanistan has been abandoned, the honourable course for Europe and the United States is not just to become a place of safety for those fleeing dangerous regimes. Rather, they must also support and protect democracy in the Middle East where it still survives; to champion the autonomy of countries or regions which act as refuges or alternative systems of government; to create “safe spaces”, if you will, for the ideals of democracy and equality.
It should be our great honour, and our duty, to support the miracle which is Iraqi Kurdistan, defended valiantly by the Peshmerga, and which has provided a refuge to millions of international displaced peoples from the region. This is now a rare island of relative peace and stability in the war-stricken area.
Likewise we must support the miracle of Rojava, the Kurdish northeast region of Syria, which upholds courageously progressive, secular, egalitarian and environmental values — those which the West claims to defend as its own.
This is an opportunity to remind ourselves that the Kurds are on the frontline, defending our common values. They must no longer be abandoned to Turkish bombardments, which recently targeted a hospital in Sinjar without any reaction from NATO, Europe or the United States.
Similarly, it should also have been our duty to protect the Panjshir region of Afghanistan and its National Resistance Front. This mountainous area was the last region to resist the Taliban, acting as a haven for those fleeing their rule. Panjshir was reported to have fallen to the Taliban last week but guerrilla resistance is likely to continue — as it remains in the streets of Kabul, where brave women and men are demonstrating against the Taliban and the interference of Pakistan.
Across the country, pockets of democracy to survive, as symbols of resistance to tyranny and optimism for a better future. Democracy grows from such places — from the bottom, not the top.
In our own interest — in the interest of freeing Afghanistan — we must not let these seeds of hope perish.
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SubscribeThe author correctly points out the naïveté of calling Hamas or Hezbollah “anti-imperialists” or thinking they share the worldview of American left-liberals. But she turns to a different version of naïveté by assuming Emmanuel Macron can inspire the people of Mosul to become French secularists.
If the West want to honestly engage the Muslim world, it must understand secularism is a worldview, indeed a religious one (which holds public life doesn’t need any input from religious rituals and is not bound by metaphysical laws). Other cultures (and most religious communities in the West) don’t share this worldview, and if you want to deal with reality on the ground, first understand the people themselves might see things differently than you wish they did.
Agreed. Western claims of neutrality are greeted with suspicion in the Muslim world because they are not credible. It would be healthier for all sides if the West embraced– or at least acknowledged– its own religious traditions. As for the left’s embrace of Hamas and Hezbollah, I think it is a serious pathology rather than simple naïveté. Like the hatred of Israel, it serves mostly as a proxy for their rejection of Western culture (itself a form of metastatic self-hatred). That it allows for the expression of their banal antisemitism is, for them, just a bonus.
well posted
She needs to tell us about France in the Sahel, they still have Foreign Legioners running around out there (even though France Military lacks air transport and has to borrow it). How are the women doing in Mali? All free to wear makeup and skirts? Under the French, with their fine ability to de-radicalize Islam they must be thriving.
“This is an opportunity to remind ourselves that the Kurds are on the frontline, defending our common values.”
I do not know any Kurds, but I doubt that many share much in the way of common values with a metropolitan liberal like you. I am more frightened by your naivety (or is it really just arrogance) than I am by the Taliban’s brutality.
Stop trying to remake the world in your own image. You just get people killed.
I blame Tony Blair.
You wouldn’t consider the Taliban with such equanimity if you were a woman hiding in Kabul.
I do not. I merely acknowledge the limits of power. As I understand it the Taliban was originally encouraged and nurtured by Western liberals. These are our monsters. Well done the liberals!
The Taliban were originally encouraged and nurtured by some elements of Pakistani intelligence, the ISI. Their rise was enabled by chaos that followed the victory of the Mujahaddin over the Soviets. It may be satisfying to blame liberals, but in this case what is the evidence?
Then I suggest that you go and discuss it with Pakistani intellgence, but leave me out as I am not interested.
Actually the Saudis created the Taliban by funding and creating the Madrases, with the ISI.
And to David – the Afghani women are as complicit in the state of religion in Afghanistan as the men. This is reality. The Mothers raise their children to be part of this belief system, as their mothers raised them. Women are not cattle owned and driven about as property. They are a half the society.
Then I suggest you make an opportunity to meet some Syrian Kurds. An explicit rejection of religious fundamentalism, Sharia law, and the idea women as property (which, unlike in, say Afghanistan the women support, to the extent that they are fighting and dying in combat roles, in order to preserve these values) combined with the establishment of a representative decentralised secular democracy modelled on Switzerland — it appears to me as if the Kurds and I share common values. Metropolitan liberals, I am not as sure of.
a timely and clear essay thanks and a call to the ‘West” to actually follow thru on what they advertize for a change. I think the Kurds are the most amazing semi subjugated people on the planet and I grind my teeth every time they are abandoned in favour of political expediency. If they can be helped to create an autonomous country they would be a shining example to the region and many would flock there to create REAL change in the Islamic world. I worked with a Peshmerga refugee (in a mental health setting) who had been through a hell we can only imagine. He was a sweet gentle guy whose main aim in life was to be able to send money back to enable what was left of his family to survive – and to somehow get home to carry on the fight for freedom.
“He was a sweet gentle guy whose main aim in life was to be able to send money back to enable what was left of his family to survive – and to somehow get home to carry on the fight for freedom.”
My guess is to get his family to UK, not that I know, just guess, but the millions and millions of unemployable young men working feverishly to get into the West are non paying the smugglers to make things better.
NZ and most of his family are dead and those that remain wont leave their homeland. He had to leave cos was on the Iraqis hitlist.
Yes, the Kurds have been shafted several times by the CIA.
Isn’t the problem not so much religious fundamentalism as mainstream thinking in the religion at issue? Unfortunately western journalists keep dodging the real question.
David, you are correct. We do not like their mainstream thinking, so like this writer, are out to ‘Fix’ it. Our own society is so degenerate they look at us with huge disdain – they think we need ‘Fixing’, but we have all the $ and power so we get to go F with them.
It’s odd that the UK imprisons Brits who return from fighting as volunteers with the YPG. If they’re our allies why is it wrong to help them? If they’re not, why let them in as refugees?
Woman is a warmonger, and quasi anti-Islamist, and wants mass migration.
“Now that Afghanistan has been abandoned, the honourable course for Europe and the United States is not just to become a place of safety for those fleeing dangerous regimes.”
Pretty much all of the article is at odds of my beliefs – but then she is French, and I guess a feminist, and if you know my opinions that means will always be wrong where Muslims are.
“Taliban soldiers strutting around in GI uniforms, driving abandoned humvees, terrorising Afghan civilians, especially women, and ultimately crushing the final bulwark of freedom — the resistance in the Panjshir valley.”
The Panjshir Valley needed to fall, keeping an impossible civil war alive was NOT a good idea.
“Afghanistan is now fated to become a sanctuary for jihadists —
Maybe not – calling then dreadful Salafist shows you have a confusion in all this. Salafist is Whabbi, is more KSA, wile Deobandi Taliban are Hanafi school. Big difference – and a huge one about being isolationist or proselytizing.
“the Taliban claims to have evolved. It promises an “inclusive” government, but this includes only the old guard members of the Taliban and the worst incarnations of Salafism.”
Several failures explain this disastrous state of affairs. The most obvious was the failure to cut off the Taliban from the drug trafficking that funded them, as well as the failure to isolate them from their sponsors, the Pakistani Secret Service”
How cut off ISI? ISI is the Pakistani Gov. We paid the ISI billions to fight the Russians wile KSA paid dollar for dollar to create the Taliban and fight in Afghanistan – this was Agreed – the $ for $ spending. The drugs thing goes to the core of ALL the players! they were all in it. CIA, ISI, Talaban, Afghani Government, everyone.
“you can only beat terrorism by attacking its ideological roots — religious fundamentalism. France and Europe realised this a long time ago”
????? Really? France knows how to do this? Hebdo France? France the Sikes Picot guys, the ones who basically gave Iran to Ayatollah Khomeini? The France who refused to be part of thee UN resolution to inspect Iraq, and force it to stop invading neighbors, and genociding its own Shia and Kurds, and so on – and basically gave them such confidence that the world could not unite that it led to all this destruction in the ME????? France is one of the biggest cause of all the mess in MENA.
She wants Kurdish separatism, well…. Furthering Pan-Kurdism is very problematic indeed. How about the other two Kurdish lands? Iran and Turkey?”
I could go through the above line by line but why bother…. “I was there to meet survivors, as well as the admirable female fighters taking on the Islamic State, for my movie Sisters in Arms.” OK, what ever, but the Wokinistas have most of the blame for Afghanistan – The MSM insisting the women needed freeing from those “its ideological roots — religious fundamentalism.” were as much the reason for the endless wars in MENA as the Military Industrial Complex. the ‘Woke/Post-Modernist, Industrial Complex’ is as destructive as the Military-Industrial complex….. And at least the Military-Complex leaves us alone in the West – but the ‘Woke-Industrial Complex may well destroy us all.
A longwinded, illiterate diatribe. Yes you SA, not the article’s author who puts forward a reasoned and clear point of view.
Really?
Read the article. It is so ladened with her prudish anti – Islamic Patriarchy, bias.
I happen to know the world, and I suspect you do not….
She lumps the whole Arabian and Afghani and likely all Islam into something she holds in contempt. Her arrogance is that we need to ‘Fix’ Islam, to make it like Secular-Humanist Liberalism
I disagree. I respect Islam. I respect Muslim societies, I know them. That they do not fit this French Woman’s cosmology is remarkable offensive to her. But the thing is – it IS what they Believe. It is not up to her to approve. (not that I want migration into the West).
This woman is trouble. Her arrogance is why we fought endless with the Muslims – because she (and her sort) disrespect them and their ways.
She wants the Afghani to be in civil war against the Taliban! That is warmongering. She wants the Kurds to be in civil war with the 4 nations (Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria) to establish Kurdistan. War mongering. She wants to fight the ISI – WTF?
She is a cultural Imperialist, she wants us to go Fix Islam….She is a Femminist, and so believes in the Patriarchy as the enemy so wants a war between the sexes.
No I do not care for her superior Cultural Imperialistic ways.
I have a question of fact. The author (and many others) claim the Taliban are funded by drugs money. This conflicts with information I read in the early 2000’s that stated that the Taliban were always anti-opium and in 2000 had finally almost eradicated it. I’ve always remembered this as it set the alarm bells ringing when opium cultivation rocketed after the invasion. What is the truth here?
Both are true. The Taliban indeed had almost irradicated it in all but the northern alliance controlled areas. This bankrupted the local farmers. However, I don’t know how much of the ban was driven by anti-opium beliefs on the part of the Taliban, and how much was driven by a promise of USD 250 million and international recognition by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (which was called the The UN International Drug Control Program at the time, but the same group). At any rate, the money and recognition never happened, 9/11 did, the farmers went back to growing even more opium because now they had an added burden of debt, and lots of people in the Taliban started saying that exporting opium so that Westerners could kill themselves with it was just great, thank you very much.
https://www.tni.org/en/article/learning-lessons-from-the-taliban-opium-ban
If a journey of a thousand miles – or a thousand years – begins with a single step, then this is at least a step in right direction. However, it may be a while before we can put any trust in the USA, as long as its version of secular democracy seems to be infused with semi-religious attitudes. I am not surprised that President Macron gets three mentions against Biden’s one. Europe must hold to its rational principles, even amid internal political differences. I am less confident about Britain with its continuing culture of deference. Beyond the ramparts, the tide of religious fundamentalism may not be as irresistible as it seems, given its internal contradictions and visceral conflicts. Historically, militant movements can be short lived, though against that is that they run out of steam only after victorious conquests. A random thought for the worst case: Sparta defeated Athens, but 2.5 millennia later it is Athens we take as a model, while Sparta is just an historical curiosity.
“before we can put any trust in the USA, as long as its version of secular democracy seems to be infused with semi-religious attitudes”
You mean Morality, Justice, Charity, Rule of Law? Because that is the legacy from Christianity in the West. Your atheist states like USSR, China, and so on lack all that – you would love them as Liberal/Lefties love Authoritarian states where all is forbidden except that which is specifically allowed by law. The internet now runs on that policy.
“Europe must hold to its rational principles, even amid internal political differences”
Europe trashed its rational principals decades ago – and during the insane covid Police State months trashed all rule of law, human rights, freedom, economy, and science.
“Beyond the ramparts, the tide of religious fundamentalism may not be as irresistible as it seems,” Just leave the religious fundamentalists alone and they are no matter. It is the Atheists who are likely to bring in the real horror. Social Credit Scores? Facial recognition, Phone tracking, and Digital Currency (Digital Remimibi) all together and 1984 is REAL!!
“Very interesting essay by an accomplished researcher.”
This is a Political piece, not a research reporting journalism.
They want a secular society modelled on Switzerland. Talk to some Kurds sometime.
You mean religion. A theology isn’t an ideology a theologian thinks because at some point it’s all God’s will. The equivalent of sucking your thumb and wanting Mummy to sort your problems out and if that means killing people well God made me do it. Deus lo veault! Let’s face it the US is hampered because it has so many religious nuts of its own that it kind of prefers the Taleban to godless Russians and Chinese.