Why
Is The World In Grip Of Jehadist Menace?
Saeed Naqvi
Three momentous events, all in November-December 1979, are the genesis of a great deal of chaos the world faces today.
First, was the return of Ayatullah
Khomeini to Teheran and the Iranian occupation of the US embassy, a siege which
lasted 444 days. The siege began on November 4.
The Iranian Revolution coincided almost
exactly with the siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca on November 20, 1979. Armed
Wahabis charged with the missionary zeal of the Ikhwan ul Muslimeen or a
virulent Muslim Brotherhood, opposed to the Saudi monarchy, occupied the
mosque.
The cloak of secrecy the Saudi state
threw on the fifteen day siege, gave rise to rumours that Iran of the
Ayatullahs was involved. Neither the Saudis nor their American backers were
interested in absolving Iran of the outrage. So they allowed the rumour to
stand.
The siege was actually a manifestation
of widespread anger with the Saudi monarchy’s minimal shift away from Wahabi
puritanism. There was universal disgust with the substantial American presence
around the oil wells of Dahran. The rebels saw the “American infidel” as a
harmful influence on Wahabi faith.
The twists and turns the media gave to
the story fuelled anti Americanism worldwide. The US embassy in Islamabad was
set on fire.
Just then the Soviets obliged. They
moved into Afghanistan on Christmas eve. This became the third momentous
development of 1979.
The world’s eyes were fixed on the
Soviets in Afghanistan and the Islamic revolution in Teheran. The far reaching
potential in Juhayman al-Otaybi’s revolt to topple the House of Saud was
diligently hidden from public view.
The Saudi ruling clique, including
Minister for Internal Security, Prince Nayef, found in President Carter’s
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a willing partner to transform
danger into an opportunity.
Otaybi’s Jehad against the Saudi state
and against the Americans would be transformed into a 20th century
crusade against Soviet Communism. Once the Soviets were overcome, Iranian
Shiaism would be the next target. Then Akhwan ul Muslimeen or Muslim
Brotherhood, (as in Egypt recently) and so on. Internal anger in Saudi Arabia
would be given an external outlet, almost in perpetuity.
Saudi security would be tied to enemies
outside its borders. Take for instance, the illogical situation in Bahrain
which is linked by the 37 kms Causeway to Saudi’s oil rich, Shia dominated,
Eastern regions of Dammam and Qatif.
Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy, the House of
Khalifa, treats 80 percent of its population, which happen to be Shia, as “the
opposition”. The forward looking crown Prince Salman Kahlifa along with a US
diplomat, Jeffrey Feltman, created a mechanism for greater Shia participation.
But before the agreement could be inked, Saudi tanks rolled down the 37 km
causeway linking Dammam to Bahrain. The message to the incipient, internal
rebellion was loud and clear: look, we are holding Shia apostasy at bay. They
may live, but they may not have power.
On the Muslim world’s centre stage, the
Nayef-Brzezinski duet roped in Pakistan’s Zia ul Haq for a mass production of
Mujahideen in Afghanistan. These would fight the Soviets and be a bulwark
against Shia Iran. Zia would help Arabize Pakistani Islam and wrench it from
India’s composite culture.
Meanwhile, the Saudis cooked up a parallel
plot. Soviet and Nasserite socialism held sway over Aden and south Yemen. While
the Caliphate ended in Turkey in 1924, the Imamat, a more Shia-like
institution, lasted in North Yemen until 1962. To check Soviet and Shia
influences in the two Yemens, training sanctuaries for Jehadists were set up
under the supervision of Mohsen al Ahmar, half brother of Yemeni strongman Ali
Abdullah Saleh. These trained Jehadis have today morphed into Al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula.
From Aden to Somalia is a short boat
ride. This is a simple logistical explanation for the expansion of Al Shabab
terrorists into neighbouring Kenya and beyond. A brigade strength Indian Peace
Keeping Force (bag pipes and all) was dispatched under Gen. Mono Bhagat in 1994
to quell the civil war after the fall of Somalian strongman, Siad Barre, in
Mogadishu. I have extensive TV footage of this campaign. It was a vicious inter
clan conflict. Somalia was a peculiar country: violent but totally secular.
That is why al Shabab is a puzzle.
Likewise, one could never have imagined
Jehadism in Qaddafi’s Libya either. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
materialized in Tripoli she spoke the memorable line: “I came, I saw and he
died”. The split screen had her in one half and Qaddafi in the other,
screaming, sodomized by a knife.
An efficient dictatorship was thus
transformed into a series of feuding tribes. Jehadists, identified as the ones
involved in the Danish cartoon mayhem, began to populate Benghazi where
eventually US ambassador Christopher Stevens was murdered. Jehadi legions
crossed into southern Egypt on the one hand and past Niger into Mali,
desecrating the great Sufi mosque of Timbaktu, exactly as the Taleban in
Afghanistan had blown up the Bamyan Buddha. Further south, the boost to Boko
Haram in Nigeria and Islamic militancy along the Sahel, all derive their DNA
from Afghanistan, after the triple tumult of 1979.
More recently the inability to oust
Bashar al Assad from Damascus and the durability of Nouri al Maliki in Baghdad where
Sunnis suffered their first status reversal once Saddam Hussain and the
Baathists made way for the first Shia government, have added to Sunni rage,
stoked by Saudi Arabia.
When Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, all
with American and European help, provided men, money and arms for the civil war
in Syria, Sunnis began to sense power. Now external support is drying up. The
moment therefore has produced the man. In the persona of Abu Bakr Baghdadi of
the ISIS, has emerged a latter day Otaybi, independent of all past sponsors,
turning viciously to bite the very hand that feeds. Americans are beginning to
learn yet again an old lesson: in the ultimate analysis, there are limits to
power.
Meanwhile, the worry in the subcontinent
ought to be on a different count: is a Baghdadi like danger possible in
our neighbourhood?
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