Recent developments in Algeria have sent shock waves throughout the Western world and given a new urgency to the problem of containing Islamic fundamentalism for would be architects of a new international order in the post-cold war era. This cannot but be a matter of considerable interest to us in India.
It does not speak too well for Western agencies that most of them, if not all of them, should have been taken by surprise by the sweep of the victory of the Algerian fundamentalists in the first round of the poll on December 26, 1991, especially in view of the performance of the latter in the municipal elections in the summer of 1990. But their subsequent dilemma is understandable. There is no clear-cut and quick solution to the challenge the fundamentalists have come to pose to the world community, including to fellow Muslims in Muslim countries.
Sense Of Relief
While it is difficult to say at this stage whether the Algerian army leadership received a nod from Paris and/or Washington before it decided to force President Chadli Bendjedid to resign, form a five-member council and cancel the elections, it is obvious that the military takeover has provided a sense of relief in important Western capitals, even if a temporary one.
Indeed, the US State Department all but welcomed the coup. Its spokesperson said on January 13 that the takeover by the five-member council in the wake of President Chadli Bendjedid’s resignation was in accordance with the provisions of the Algeria constitution.
A day later the State Department felt it necessary to take note of the criticism within Algeria of the council’s decision to cancel the elections by, among others, leaders of the National Liberation Front which has ruled the country in cooperation with the army since its independence 30 years ago.
Its spokesperson then said: “We are not going to take sides on whether they (five-member council) are indeed operating within the constitution or, as the opposition claims, they are not.” This apparent stance of neutrality cannot disguise the reality. To put it no higher, Washington was not unhappy that the army had intervened to stall the march into power of fundamentalists in so crucial a country as Algeria.
Of Western capitals, Paris in particular lives in fear of the consequences of a fundamentalist takeover in Algeria. France has large stakes in the Algerian economy; French companies enjoy monopoly in the vital oil industry which the Islamic Salvation Front is committed to cancel. But the well-known French obsession with commercial interests alone does not account for the concern.
The French authorities have reason to fear a massive influx of the Westernised intelligentsia in the event of a fundamentalist takeover, radicalisation of 800,000 Algerians already in France, and an upsurge in the appeal of the anti-immigrant, if not racist, National Front headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen. So the sense of relief over the military coup too is understandable. And not only in France, in view of the growing strength of the anti-immigrant backlash in much of western Europe. Most immigrants to Europe, unlike to America, are Muslims.
The trouble, though, is that the remedy may not work. The five-member council is a ramshackle affair. That the generals had to recall the 71-year-old Bodiaf from a 25-year-long exile in Morocco to head the council speaks volumes about its weakness.
Moreover, after the disintegration of the Soviet state and the triumph of democracy in one country after another in recent years, no army dictatorship can command the kind of self-confidence and ‘legitimacy’ it could till recently. The council may well collapse if the mosque-centred opposition mounts and the soldiers refuse to fire on fellow citizens. Neither development is unlikely.
In this scenario, it is not particularly relevant to discuss either the West’s continuing subordination of democratic principles to its interests, or the incompatibility between Islamic fundamentalism and democracy. The far more pertinent fact is that the issue between the West and Islamic fundamentalism is finally joined. The engagement cannot be broken off, though it is not possible to say how it will shape.
Algeria is as vital for the West as Iran, even if its oil reserves are not as large. And unlike Shia Iran, it cannot be isolated. Algeria sits next door to Europe. Developments there will greatly influence the course of events in Tunisia and Morocco where the fundamentalists are pretty influential and regimes equally vulnerable.
Iranian Revolution
The problem for the West is not limited to the Maghrib. It extends far beyond. This is, of course, not a new development. The threat of Islamic fundamentalism dates back to the Iranian revolution in 1979. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, Westerners are more willing to face this reality than they were before. Indeed, earlier they regarded Islamic fundamentalism as an ally against communism. Witness the US support for the fundamentalists among the Afghan mujahideen till last year.
Be that as it may, however, we are probably witnessing a shift in Western policy orientation similar to one at the end of the war against Nazi Germany in 1945 when the Soviet ally suddenly got converted into a mortal foe.
By way of illustration, we may refer to Brian Beedham’s “Turkey Star of Islam” in The Economist, London, December 14-20, 1991. He writes: “The appropriately crescent-shaped piece of territory that starts in the steppes of Khazakhstan and curves south and west through the gulf and the Suez to the north coast of Africa” is “notably liable to produce turmoil and mayhem on a large scale in the coming 15-20 years”.
Beedham cites some of the reasons for this assessment. Of the 19 countries south of the old Soviet border that constitute the main part of the crescent at least 13 or 14 had their populations growing faster than their economies in the second half of the eighties. The economic gloom is unlikely to lift.
Not counting non-Muslim Israel, the area does not yet have a single working democracy. “Worse, it does have an ideology. Now that Marxism has been lowered into its grave, Islam is the 20th century’s last surviving example of an idea that claims universal relevance..:. Not all Muslims are ideologues; probably most are not. Enough are to make Islam an uncomfortable neighbour.”
Ideological Theme
Barry Buzan dwells on the same ideological theme in “New Patterns of Global Security in the 21st Century” in the Chatham House’s highly respected International Affairs (Vol. 67, No.3, 1991): “The collapse of communism as the leading anti-Western ideology seems to propel Islam into this role … and many exponents of Islam will embrace this task with relish. The anti-Western credentials of Islam are well established and speak to a large and mobilised political constituency”.
In an article entitled “Defending Western Culture”, in the fall 1991 issue of Foreign Policy, New York, William J. Lind draws attention to another aspect of the threat to the West. “If the Soviet Union dissolves, the West’s right flank, stretching from the Black Sea to Vladivostok will almost certainly be endangered as the Islamic republics seek to join their Muslim brethren”.
Western analysts are, of course, not insensitive to the fact that Islamic fundamentalism is in no small measure a reaction against utterly corrupt and inefficient regimes which have sought to keep themselves in power through slogan-mongering and ruthless suppression of even vague suspicions of dissent. But the emphasis is beginning to shift to the inherent incompatibility between Western values such as democracy and plurality and Islamic fundamentalism with its accent on the Koran and the Hadith as the sole sources of not only morality but also legality.
The emphasis appears, on the face of it, to be misplaced in view of the fierceness of the Muslim world’s own all too numerous conflicts and rivalries. But fundamental changes have taken place in Islam as such, ironically largely as a result of the Western impact, which give it a long-term militancy and capacity to confront the West, though in the role of a disrupter and not that of an architect of a rival world order. This incidentally was also all that the Communists were capable of under the leadership of the Soviet Union.
The Times of India, 30 January 1992