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NATO’s War on Terror needs a strategic reorientation

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In Brief

The controversial replacement of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, has exposed the strategic confusion at the heart of NATO’s War on Terror. The strategies pursued so far have not only failed to stabilise Afghanistan but have also destabilised Pakistan. Consequently, this war is unlikely to end in the near future, if victory, howsoever defined, is the objective. Even if victory is obtained, the subsequent revival of Islamic extremists (henceforth, Islamists) is quite likely. So, without an ‘ideological war’ strategy, there is no point wasting taxpayers’ billions in temporarily repulsing ragtag Islamist militias.

NATO believes that a decisive victory coupled with democratisation and development is sufficient to conclusively defeat the Islamists.

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But this strategy will at best bring the war-torn areas back to pre-war levels of development, without affecting the ideological base of the Islamists. In the meantime, the drone-borne war financed by democratic countries will discredit the very idea of democracy more than it would harm the militias.

Democracy and development is not the answer to the Islamists. If democracy fails to deliver, people will be told that God is unhappy with innovations. Otherwise, people will be asked to guard against the charms of Satan. The Islamists are insulated from the performance of markets and fledgling democracies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The war cannot be won unless the ideological appeal of the Islamists is limited, for which the historical divide between them and the masses has to be exploited.

South Asian Islams can be grouped into two broad categories: Heterodox/Sufi Islam, which promotes religious syncretism, and exclusivist/puritan Islam, which promotes religious sectarianism. The theological divide between these categories is complemented by a linguistic divide, which goes back to the formative period of Sufism in South Asia, when Amir Khusro (1253 – 1325 CE), a gifted poet-musician and disciple of Sheikh Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi, began to use local languages to express his religious thoughts. Sufi engagement with South Asian languages, religions, and cultures was not without challengers within Islam. Many were punished for apostasy. But they have always defended their freedom of conscience and expression. It bears noting that not all orders of Sufis are syncretists. Naqshbandi Sufism, prevalent in Central Asia and adjoining parts of South Asia, is very sectarian and played an important role in vitiating communal harmony in medieval South Asia.

The Deobandis, contemporary exemplars of the other Islam in South Asia, derive their appellation from an important Sunni seminary, the Darul Uloom in Deoband, North India. This seminary attracts students from across the Sunni world and its graduates play an important role within Muslim communities as teachers in seminaries, experts of Islamic law. The seminary promotes Arabic while it shuns South Asian languages, except Urdu, the mother tongue of merely 15 per cent of South Asian Muslims. While the Pakistani Deobandis continue to hold the seminary in Deoband in reverence, they have independent seminaries and differ from their Indian cousins. Unlike their Indian cousins, who operate within a stable state and publicly shun violence, the Pakistani Deobandis show a marked preference for violence due to state-sponsored exposure to jihads in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The Afghan experience has, in fact, drawn the Pakistani Deobandis, ideologically and operationally, closer to Wahhabism and global jihad.

These differences aside, linguistic exclusivism of the Deobandis neatly dovetails with their religious sectarianism across South Asia. The Deobandis are opposed to all non-Deobandis, Sufis included. Their disengagement from South Asian culture and attempt to re-cast South Asian Islam in an extremist mould, with generous support from the Middle East, contrasts starkly with locally-supported Sufism’s linguistic and religious syncretism. No wonder Sufism’s appeal transcends religious boundaries, whereas the Deobandi appeal is restricted to a sub-group of Sunnis. But Sufism and other heterodox sects are beleaguered in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the Islamists are ascendant. The Taliban, who destroyed the cultural heritage of Afghanistan and adjoining parts of Pakistan, are products of Pakistani Deobandi seminaries.

Other exclusivist Islamic sects in South Asia are structurally similar to the Deobandis. For instance, the Ahl-e Hadith (People of the Traditions of the Prophet) sect also shuns local culture, is opposed to other Islamic sects, including the Deobandis, and the difference between its Indian and Pakistani wings parallels the difference between the two wings of the Deobandis. Moreover, like the Deobandis, its Pakistani wing has its own militant outfit, the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Ideologically, this sect is closer to the Wahhabis than the Deobandis. Lashkar has carried out a number of attacks on prominent Kashmiri Sufi institutions.

Surprisingly, despite its partition in 1971 due to imposition of Urdu and sectarian Islam on Bengalis, the Pakistani state and army continue to patronise Urdu (the mother tongue of less than 10 per cent of Pakistanis) and Islamists and suppress local languages and heterodox sects. So far, the Islamists are far from dominant in Pakistan and have never managed to win free and fair elections. Yet if current policies persist, the balance of power could ultimately change in their favour.

NATO cannot win the war unless the frontline states amend their language, educational and cultural policies that suppress heterodox sects and local languages, which, as outlined above, are closely related and are the only organic sources of resistance to the Arabic-Islamists. But why not organise purely secular ideological resistance, say, by organising farmers’ interests? Any ideological resistance has to clear the Islam-in-danger hurdle before being a credible option against the Islamists. Leftist movements in South Asia have not been successful in meeting this requirement. But does the proposed strategy divert attention from real issues like political ambitions and narcotic smuggling for which Islam is a convenient cover? Once again the proposed strategy is sensible; when pushed to the wall these vested interests champion the Islam-in-danger cause with telling effect.

In short, the War on Terror cannot be won unless the Islamist ideology is delegitimised and best way to achieve this is to protect and strengthen its local competitors. It is not that development and democracy are superfluous, but unless complemented with a suitable ideological war strategy, they cannot be effective. NATO can no longer afford to remain neutral in the ideological war within South Asian Islam.

Vikas Kumar is an independent researcher based in Bangalore.

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