Brahma Chellaney: America must not fuel the fires of fundamentalism

FOLLOWING the death of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, Libya’s interim government announced the “liberation” of the country. It also declared that a system based on sharia law, including polygamy, would replace the secular dictatorship Gaddafi ran for 42 years.

Swapping one form of authoritarianism for another seems a cruel let-down after seven months of Nato airstrikes in the name of democracy.

The western powers that brought about regime change have made little effort to prevent its new rulers from establishing a theocracy. But this is the price the west willingly pays in exchange for choosing the new leadership. Indeed, the cloak of Islam helps protect the credibility of leaders who might be seen as foreign puppets.

For the same reason, the west has condoned the rulers of the oil sheikhdoms for their long-standing alliance with radical clerics. For example, the decadent House of Saud, backed by the United States, not only practices Wahhabi Islam – the source of modern Islamic fundamentalism – but also exports this fringe form of the faith, gradually snuffing out more liberal Islamic traditions. Yet, when the Saudi Crown Prince died recently, the US stood by silently as the ruling family appointed its most reactionary Islamist as the new heir to the throne.

So intrinsic have the Arab monarchs become to US interests that America has failed to stop these royals funding Muslim extremist groups and madrasas in other countries. Arab petrodollars have played a key role in fomenting militant Islamic fundamentalism that targets the west, Israel and India as its enemies. The US interest in maintaining pliant regimes in oil-rich countries trumps all other considerations.

With western support, the oil monarchies, even the most tyrannical, have been able to ride out the Arab Spring, emerging virtually unscathed. For the US, the sheikhdoms that make up the Gulf Co-operation Council – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman – are critical for geostrategic reasons as. After withdrawing from Iraq, the US is considering using Kuwait as a new military hub to expand its military presence in the region and foster a US-led “security architecture,” under which its air and naval patrols would be regionally integrated.

Nato-led regime change in Libya – which holds the world’s largest reserves of the light sweet crude oil that American and European refineries prefer – was not really about ushering in liberal democracy. The new Libya faces uncertain times. The only certain element is its new rulers will remain beholden to those who helped install them.

America’s ties with Islamist rulers and groups were cemented in the 1980’s, when the Reagan administration used Islam to spur armed resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In 1985, at a White House ceremony attended by several Afghan mujahideen – who became the Taleban and al-Qaeda – Reagan gestured toward his guests and declared, “These gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.”

Yet the lessons of the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan have already been forgotten. The Obama administration’s current effort to strike a Faustian bargain with the Taleban, for example, ignores America’s own experience of the consequences of following the path of expediency.

Another lesson that has been ignored is the need for caution in training Islamic insurgents and funnelling arms to them. In Libya, bringing the rebel militias under government control could prove difficult, potentially creating a jihadist citadel at Europe’s southern doorstep.

Exponents of US policy argue that it is sometimes necessary to choose the lesser of two evils. Unsavoury allies – from Islamist militias to regimes that bankroll them – may be an unavoidable price to be paid in the service of larger interests.

Paradoxically, the US practice of propping up Islamist rulers in the Middle East often results in strong anti-US sentiment, as well as support for more independent and “authentically” Islamist forces.

The fight against Islamist terrorism can succeed only by ensuring states do not strengthen those who extol violence as a religious tool. Unfortunately, with the US wilfully ignoring lessons of the recent past, the extremists are once again waiting in the wings.

• Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi Centre for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut and Water: Asia’s New Battleground