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GLOBAL VIEWPOINT

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NOBEL LAUREATES

11-20-03

CENTER OF ISLAMIST FUNDAMENTALISM IS MOVING FROM ARABIA TO ASIA
Democracy Is Possible in Arab World

Bernard-Henri Levy, France's most well-known philosopher, is author most recently of "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?" He spoke with Global Viewpoint editor Nathan Gardels at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Nov. 16 during a visit to Los Angeles.

NATHAN GARDELS: Has the focus on Iraq distracted from the real battle against Al-Qaeda-type terrorism and its sympathetic mindset that flourishes from Pakistan to Indonesia?

BERNARD-HENRI LEVY: Absolutely. This was the primary reason I opposed the Iraq war in the first place. The center of gravity of Islamist fundamentalism is shifting from west to east-from the Arab world to the Asiatic world. As V.S. Naipaul already pointed out in his book, "Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among Converted Peoples," the zeal of converts outside the Arab world is more fervent. The Iraq war is a diversion that ignores this emerging reality.

Take an example. If you look at a map of the world from the point of view of Al Qaeda, the focal point is not Palestine. It is Kashmir. That is closer to the center of the Muslim world, which after all is mostly Asian, than Palestine. For Osama bin Liden and other jihadists, Kashmir is much more important. Kashmir is their name for Palestine.

Remember, before Sept. 11, Osama bin Laden never mentioned Palestine. His camps were in Afghanistan, which were close to Kashmir.

Of course, all jihadists, like politicians in Muslim countries, invoke Palestine ritualistically in their rhetoric. But the passion is moving elsewhere.

In 20 years, I doubt if the Arab world will be the main problem. Bush's mistake is that he is a messianic democrat who thinks you can change the Arabs in one day. But the Americans are right in a broader sense.

Historically, there is a kind of maturity in the Arab world-in part because of the protracted contacts over the Middle East peace process-that may make it more open to pressures for democracy. Muslim Asia is a much bigger challenge.

In Francis Fukuyama's sense, history may well come to an end in the Arab world just as it has in the West with the acceptance of the liberal democratic alternative. But history begins again in the Asiatic Muslim world.

GARDELS: The CIA recently said that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was the operational commander of Al Qaeda, admitted in detention that he was the one who actually drew the knife across Daniel Pearl's neck and decapitated him.

Do you think that is true?

LEVY: I am very surprised that the Western press uncritically accepted this statement by an unnamed source at the CIA. But who is this source? Why make this claim now? What is the purpose?

On the one hand, this information would confirm what I wrote in my book, that Daniel Pearl was killed because he was on the trail to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, then still at large. But in my eyes it is rather unlikely that this man would have been Pearl's killer.

It is unthinkable that someone so high in the Al Qaeda network would do such work -- the killing -- himself. There are so many Pakistanis and Baluchi Yemenis skilled and educated to kill in Karachi. You can hire them for less than $100. Why do it himself?

Also, the anonymous source of the CIA says the claim is based on reading the police interrogation report of Faizal Karim, the man who held Daniel Pearl by his hair as his throat was slit. I read this transcript myself during my research in Karachi. He never mentions Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's name at all, but instead describes the Baluchi Yemenis who he said killed Pearl.

So, why is the CIA putting out this information? I don't know. One hypothesis: to point the finger away from (Pakistani President Pervez) Musharraf and the secret services, or ISI, in Pakistan-Omar Sheikh, who was arrested for organizing Pearl's kidnapping was an agent of the ISI-and toward Al Qaeda and the others from outside. Maybe it takes the heat and light off Saud Menem, the wealthy Pakistani owner of the compound where Pearl was killed. He remains at large, even though he is a rich man who is well known all around Karachi.

In short, this claim by the CIA is a way to de-Pakistanize the war on terror. I could be wrong, but what other reason could there be?

GARDELS: You have spent a lot of time over the past year in Pakistan. Is Gen. Musharraf a good ally for the West?

LEVY: The United States is naive about Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. I am not against an alliance with him in the "war on terrorism," but the aid given to Pakistan through Musharraf should be much more tied to democratic reforms and to such actions as closing down the "madrasas" which teach hatred and sometimes how to act on that hatred.

The unconditional embrace of Musharraf during his visits to New York and Paris was a slap in the face of the democrats in Pakistan, for example those journalists who want a free press or those women seeking an end to honor killings. More than an insult, it was taken as a sign they were abandoned in favor of the military regime. It breeds despair among the best people in the society.

With Musharraf we are repeating the same mistake we committed before Sept.

11 by abandoning Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan resistance fighter, while acquiescing in the Taliban regime.

Pakistan is not just Musharraf and his ISI. It is the civil society as well.

GARDELS: Pakistan had a kind of democracy, under Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. But as Musharraf himself argues, it was their corruption that most undermined democracy.

Perhaps Pakistan needs a strong man, paradoxically, to rebuild the foundations upon which democracy can be built?

LEVY: The Taliban also said they were here to fight corruption. This is the same game the West played with (Slobodan) Milosevic, the game of accepting his power as a way to control, in that case, the Bosnian Serb militias. We do the same with Musharraf, believing he can rein in the radical Islamists.

This is a lazy diplomacy. We think if we invest in him, he will manage everything and it will all be quiet.

But what did Milosevic do? If tactics required it, on some days he played to the West. On other days he blessed the genocide at Srebrenica.

Is Musharraf in control of his security forces? He doesn't even control his own mind. That is where the front line is. And, as in any war, the front line moves. His mind is split down the middle between playing sheriff for the West and promoting moderation, while at the same time giving breathing space to the considerable constituency of sympathizers for the Taliban and Al Qaeda who still support a radical agenda. This is not about psychology.

For Musharraf, it is a matter of balance of power. Like any individual he is not an entity unto himself but a meeting point of others that constitute him. So he gives a little here, he gives a little there.

It appears obvious to me that he holds in reserve, as a kind of currency, his ability to arrest Al Qaeda-linked miilitants at will. He lets them run free until he needs something from the West or feels he has to smooth feathers.

How was it that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was arrested in March the day before the U.N. vote on going to war in Iraq, in which Musharraf had to tell Bush he did not support the U.S. resolution? The same goes for the arrest of Ramzi bin al-Shibh in 2002 on the very anniversary of Sept. 11 as a sort of gift to Bush.

I have no doubt, that when it suits his purpose, Musharraf will turn Osama bin Laden over to the United States.

(c) 2003, Global Viewpoint. Distributed by Tribune Media Services International.
For immediate release (Distributed 11/20/03)