Patrick Cockburn: Can Obama turn rhetoric into the reality of peace with the Muslim world?

Patrick Cockburn: Can Obama turn rhetoric into the reality of peace
with the Muslim world?

The President's bridge-building is welcome. But it will take more than
words to erase the damage done by his predecessor

Wednesday, 8 April 2009

The start of the Iraq war in 2003 marked a crucial break between the
US and almost all the states of the region. "None of Iraq's
neighbours, absolutely none, were pleased by the American occupation
of Iraq," says the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari. Long-term
US allies like Turkey astonished the White House by refusing to allow
US troops to use its territory to invade Iraq.

Barack Obama, who made his first official visit to the country
yesterday, is now trying to disengage from Iraq without appearing to
scuttle or leave anarchy behind.

He is trying to win back old allies, and, as he made clear in a speech
in Ankara on Monday, to end the confrontation between the US and Islam
which was president Bush's legacy.

It is not easy for Mr Obama to reverse the tide of anti-Americanism or
bring to an end the wars which Mr Bush began. For all the Iraqi
government's claim that life is returning to normal in Baghdad the
last few days have seen a crescendo of violence. The day before the
President, arrived six bombs exploded in different parts of Baghdad,
killing 37 people.

And as much as Mr Obama would like to treat the Iraq war as ancient
history, the US is still struggling to extricate itself. The very fact
that the Democratic President had to arrive in Iraq by surprise, as
George Bush and Tony Blair invariably did, for security reasons, shows
that the conflict is refusing to go away.

The Iraqi Prime Minister and President remain holed up in the Green
Zone most of the time. The American President could not fly into the
Green Zone by helicopter because of bad weather but the airport road
is still unsafe and Baghdad remains one of the most dangerous
countries in the world. The Iraqi political landscape too was
permanently altered by the US invasion and it will be difficult to
create a stable Iraqi state which does not depend on the US. Opinion
polls in Iraq show that most Iraqis believe that it is the US and not
their own government which is in control of their country.

One change which is to Mr Obama's advantage is that the American media
has largely stopped reporting the conflict because they no longer have
the money to do so and a majority of Americans think the war was won.
But the danger for the President is that if there is a fresh explosion
in Iraq, he may be blamed for throwing away a victory that was won by
his predecessor.

The rhetoric with which the US conducts its diplomacy is easier to
change than facts on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. Mr Obama's
speech to the Turkish parliament in Ankara was a carefully judged bid
to reassure the Muslim world that the US is not at war with Islam.

Everything he said was in sharp contrast to George Bush's bellicose
threats post 9/11 about launching a "crusade" and to the rhetoric of
neo-conservatives attacking "Islamo-fascism" or claiming that there
was a "clash of civilisations."

The leaders of states with Muslim majorities appreciate the different
tone of US pronouncements, but privately wonder how far Mr Obama will
be able to introduce real change.

Turkish students at a meeting with Mr Obama in Istanbul yesterday
voiced scepticism that American actions in future would be much
different from what they were under Mr Bush. Reasonably enough, Mr
Obama replied that he should be given time and "moving the ship of
state is a slow process." But he also cited the US withdrawal from
Iraq as a sign that he would match actions to words.

Istanbul, on the boundaries of Europe and Asia, is a good place for
the US leader to declare a more conciliatory attitude towards Islam.
The city is filled with grandiose monuments to Christianity and Islam,
though religious tolerance was more in evidence under the Ottoman
empire than since the foundation of the modern Turkish state in 1923.
Mr Obama paid visits to the great Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia and
was shown the splendours of the Blue Mosque by turbaned clerics.

But the women students wearing short skirts and without headscarves
asking Mr Obama questions in fluent English yesterday give a
misleading impression of the balance between the secular and the
religious in modern-day Turkey.

The reality is that secularism is dying away in Turkey's rural
hinterland and is on the retreat even in Istanbul itself. Butchers
selling pork are few compared to 20 years ago. Obtaining alcohol is
quietly being made more difficult, except for foreign tourists, by
high taxes on wine and expensive liquor licenses for restaurants.

The old middle class, particularly in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir may
be resolute in their defence of the secular state. But the so-called
"Anatolian Tigers", the new companies which have led Turkey's
spectacular economic growth, are generally owned and run by more
conservative families where the women wear headscarves.

"Socially Turkey is becoming far more Islamic," said one expert on
Turkey yesterday, "although the ruling Justice and Development Party
(AKP) is moving cautiously."

Mr Obama's effort to make a U-turn in American policy towards the
Islamic world will ultimately depend on how far he changes US policy
towards Israel and the Palestinians, the occupation of Iraq, the
confrontation with Iran and Syria and the war in Afghanistan.

The Iranians, for instance, note that despite Mr Obama's friendlier
approach to them the US official in Washington in charge of
implementing sanctions against them is a hold-over from the Bush
administration.

The American confrontation with Islam post 9/11 always had more to do
with opposition to foreign intervention and occupation than it did
with cultural differences; the most ideologically religious Islamic
countries such as Saudi Arabia supported the US and it is doubtful how
far al-Qa'ida fighters were motivated primarily by religious
fanaticism.

The chief US interrogator in Iraq, Major Mathew Alexander, who is
credited with finding out the location of the al-Qa'ida leader Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, says that during 1,300 interrogations he supervised,
he came across only one true ideologue. He is quoted as saying that "I
listened time and time again to foreign fighters, and Sunni Iraqis,
state that the No 1 reason they had decided to pick up arms and join
al-Qa'ida was the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the authorised torture and
abuse at Guantanamo Bay."

This diagnosis by Major Alexander is confirmed by the history of
Islamic fundamentalism across the Muslim world over the past 30 years.

It was the success of the Iranian revolution against the Shah in
1978/79 which began an era when political Islam was seen as a threat
by the West, but Ayatollah Khomeini's appeal to Iranians always had a
strong strain of nationalism and his exiling by the Shah in 1964 was
because of his vocal opposition to extra-territorial rights for US
military personnel in Iran.

The success of political Islam over secular nationalism in the Arab
world has largely been because of the former's ability to resist the
enemies of the community or the state. In Egypt the nationalism of
Nasser was discredited by humiliating defeat in the 1967 war with
Israel. In Iraq, for all his military bravado, Saddam Hussein was a
notably disastrous military leader. All the military regimes espousing
nationalism and secularism in the Arab world began or ended up turning
into corrupt and brutal autocracies. In contrast, political Islam has
been able to go some way towards delivering its promises of defending
the community.

In Lebanon, Hizbollah guerrillas were able to successfully harass
Israeli forces in the 1990s where Yasser Arafat's commanders had
abandoned their men and fled.

In Gaza this year, Hamas was able to portray themselves as the one
Palestinian movement committed to resisting Israel.

In Iraq, al-Qa'ida got nowhere until it could present itself as the
opposition to the US occupation and as an ally, though a supremely
bigoted and murderous one, of Iraqi nationalism.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has the advantage of fighting against
foreign occupation.

Secularism in the Arab world and in Afghanistan, on the other hand,
has the problem that it is seen as being at the service of foreign
intervention. It is why secularism and nationalism is ultimately
stronger in Turkey than it is in almost all other Islamic countries.

Kemal Ataturk and the Turkish nationalists were successfully defended
the Turkish heartlands from foreign attack between 1915 and 1922. This
gave secularism and nationalism a credibility and a popularity in
Turkey which they never had in Iraq, Egypt or Syria.

Mr Obama's aim of ending the confrontation between the US and the
Muslim world is both easier and more difficult than it looks. It is
easier because the confrontation is not primarily over religion or
clashing cultures. But the confrontation is over real issues such as
the fate of the Palestinians, the future of Iraq and the control of
Afghanistan. And even if Mr Obama wanted to change the US political
relationship with Israel, it is not clear that he has any more
political strength at home than George Bush had to do so.

If these concrete issues are not resolved then America's confrontation
with the Muslim world may remain as confrontational and difficult as
it was under Mr Bush