Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Obama And A Fractured Middle East

By Tom Risen  

Updated at 10:35 a.m. on March 11.

Born and raised in Iran, Reza Aslan studied first-hand the struggle within Islam to define its existence in the modern world. Today Aslan sees that same dualism in a Middle East wracked by the lure of terrorism, but also pulsing with a growing middle class that has energized massive protests in Iran. An Islamic studies scholar and author of How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror, he closely watches the growing influence of a large under-40 demographic that takes a new, individualistic approach toward Islam.

Aslan spoke with NationalJournal.com about those changes, how Iran's Green Movement may already have won and what Obama can accomplish in the Middle East.

Edited excerpts follow.

NJ: Iran's Revolutionary Guard has taken controlling interest in telecommunications there and has shown willingness to shut down electronics reception. What do you expect the next move of the Green Movement of protesters will be?

Aslan: I don't think the strategy of the Green Movement is going to be all that much affected by these "nuclear options" of simply shutting down access to the Internet or mobile service; that's a losing enterprise. You can't keep doing that every time that there is some kind of possibility of a demonstration. The Iranian economy simply can't take it.

But, at the same time, I do think there is a reassessment of the Green Movement strategy. It's becoming clear that the fact that this has remained leaderless all of this time -- which was OK at the beginning because you had YouTube and you had Facebook and you had Twitter, so you didn't really need a leader to take control of the movement itself -- now, eight-nine months into this movement, there is a general consensus that unless there is a greater leadership... then it will be hard to maintain momentum on this movement.

At the same time, I think that in some ways, the movement's goals have already been achieved. By which I mean, a huge part of the legitimacy of the regime in Iran comes from the fact that they say they speak for Iranians, that they speak from a position of moral and religious authority. That there is a democratic veneer to everything that the Islamic Republic does. What I think the Green Movement has done is put the lie to all of those issues. It's now quite clear that the way that this regime is going to maintain power is by stripping away, as I say, the veneer of democracy, or religious legitimacy, and they're showing quite clearly what they are, which is a dictatorial police state.

NJ: How do you think the Obama administration is responding to the rise of the Revolutionary Guard? Should he be doing more?

Aslan: We're in this weird position because we don't have any influence over Iran. We're not in the situation in which we can really punish Iran by taking something away from them. The Obama administration's attempt to focus sanctions -- which is really the only thing we have at our disposal right now in order to deal with Iran -- to focus sanctions specifically on businesses owned and run by the Revolutionary Guard is a good idea....

But there isn't much else that the United States could possibly do. Again, who has failed in this? I would say Europe has failed. Look, we're not going to get anything from China -- let's just get real on that. China has no incentive to punish Iran.... But Europe, which maintains not just enormous economic and trade relationships with Iran but still has diplomatic relationships with Iran, has I think completely dropped the ball over the last eight months. At no point at the height of the government's brutal repression of these Iranians in the Green Movement -- at no point did Europe even threaten, for instance, to recall their ambassadors.

NJ: What kind of result could Obama gain from re-engaging with Syria after sending Robert Ford as ambassador recently?

Aslan: It's not going to be easy, but Syria really can be a linchpin to Obama's foreign policy goal. Obama has done -- let's face it -- not a very good job so far in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.... But an Israeli-Syria peace plan is not so hard to imagine. It's something that both sides want, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] is quite open to a peace deal with Syria, and Bashar al-Assad stated on numerous occasions that he would be willing to pursue a peace deal with Israel.... If we can get them to cut off support for Hamas or at the very least help in bringing Hamas to the table, that would be a good thing. It would also cut off some support for Hezbollah, which Israel still sees as a real threat to its national security interests in the region. And, of course, a peace deal between Israel and Syria, despite various protestations, would necessarily draw Syria away from Iran, which of course is something that Israel and the United States would love.

NJ: Does that mean you think Obama's outreach to the Middle East last year didn't accomplish much?

Aslan: He's done nothing. I mean, saying to the Israelis that they must cease all settlement activity and then being told 'no' is probably the weakest the United States has ever been shown to be with regard to its relationship with Israel. I mean, now we all know who wears the pants in this relationship.

NJ: Could you explain briefly this Islamic reformation you say shapes new individualistic generation of Muslims?

Aslan: The authority to define Islam as a religion over the last hundred years is slowly passing to individuals because of a rise in literacy and education, because of greater access to new ideas and the new sources of knowledge and information, and because of these communication technologies that have allowed for the spreading of opinions and ideas and information across borders, across boundaries, across languages.... The process whereby individual Muslims are approaching the Quran, approaching Islam, and interpreting their religion without mediation, defining their religion for themselves based on their own needs, their own ideas. That's the reformation process....

In individualizing Islam it has necessarily resulted in progressive, pluralistic, Western style versions of Islam, but it's also created the exact opposite, jihadist versions of Islam. In fact, jihadism, Al Qaeda, is the inevitable result of the Islamic reformation. Someone like Osama bin Laden is actually, really, the Martin Luther of the Islamic reformation. Think about it. This is a man who has no religious qualifications whatsoever, whose primary message is that individuals should be able to define Islam for themselves and they shouldn't rely on the clerics, whom he dismisses anyway... as either corrupted or irrelevant. And that's why he's had so much success -- limited success -- in reaching out particularly to young people, and particularly to young people in the West, who are already living in these highly individualized cultures.

NJ: Is there enough of a middle class left in Iraq to keep out extremism?

Aslan: Without a strong middle class, I don't think that Iraq is going to be able to survive. Thus far, despite a decade of violence and terror, really unimaginable, it does seem -- and I'm being cautiously optimistic here -- it does seem that Iraq does have an opportunity through this middle class and through greater investment from the international community to create the situation in which these terrorists -- who are still going to be there -- are not going to have the kind of impact that they had, say, in '04, '05, '06. But again, that all depends on whether Iraqis themselves are going to be able to have jobs, whether they're going to be able to have security, all the things that [stave off] these grievances that tend to feed these kinds of radical movements.

NJ: Talk a little about engaging the tribal structure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Has the Obama administration made any improvements understanding this aspect of society as players to create stability?

Aslan: Certainly in Afghanistan they have. Now, let's put credit where credit is due: This process began in the last years of the Bush administration. It had a lot to do with the coalition that formed between scholars like David Kilcullen and military men like David Petraeus. I think that the Petraeus-Kilcullen partnership, in creating a situation in which Petraeus became the commander of CENTCOM, so that he essentially called the shots, allowed for what scholars like myself had been clamoring for since September 11, which was to stop thinking of groups like the Taliban like they're a monolithic organization. There are dozens of different tribes and ethnic groups and social movements that refer to themselves as Taliban; many of these groups have very little in common with each other. And if someone like Kilcullen is to be believed, the vast majority -- some 90 percent -- of who we call "Taliban" are not ideologically inclined against us and in fact would very likely be willing to put down their weapons or at the very least stop shooting at us in exchange for some money, obviously, and the promise of semi-autonomy, and it seems as though that's precisely what the new Afghanistan strategy that Obama unveiled earlier in the year is all about.

NJ: What's your perspective on the drawdown of troops in Iraq and their shift to Afghanistan?

Aslan: I understand that the military brass, including David Petraeus, has said repeatedly that no matter what happens... there will be no combat troops in Iraq by, I think, next summer. I can't find a foreign policy analyst who agrees with that consensus. I have yet to find a single expert in the region who says that that's actually going to happen. And I'm one of them.... You've got entire groups like the Sadrists who have said quite openly that they're just going to put down their weapons and lay low until the Americans leave.

NJ: How about the Iraqi government?

Aslan: They're doing better than they've done before. They have a bit more legitimacy than they've had, and they've created a bit more security at least in Baghdad.... There does seem to be at the ground level, among the people themselves, a real desire to break through some of the sectarian divisions.... Whether this is an indication of an upswell of anti-sectarian sentiment, I suppose we'll have to wait for the election for that to come to fruition or not.