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2 Radical US approach for radical
leaders By Ehsan Ahrari
As much as the Bush administration is
trying to find an "honorable" way out of Iraq,
there does not seem to be any light at the end of
the tunnel. In fact, every week the tunnel of the
Middle East gets darker for the United States.
President George W Bush is desperately trying to
formulate a "Sunni front" to confront Iran in Iraq
and Lebanon. Lebanon itself is edging toward
political collapse.
At this crucial
moment, the US needs to adopt a radical approach
to deal with a new breed of three radical Shi'ite
leaders: President
Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran,
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah
Party and Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Jaish
al-Mehdi (Mehdi Army).
At present, Bush's
approach belongs to a bygone era that was focused
on sustaining American supremacy and Middle
Eastern subservience. The new breed of leaders, in
a distinct departure from the dying breed of Sunni
autocrats, not only rejects American dominance of
their region, but wants to be accepted as
representative of a new era in which Islam will
play a dominant role in the balance of power.
Shi'ite leaders Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah and
Muqtada all repudiate the politics of
accommodation of the US and the West that is
popularized by current Sunni leaders such as Hosni
Mubarak of Egypt, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
and even King Abdullah of Jordan.
The
three Shi'ite leaders are practitioners of the
politics of defiance and rejection of the old
order and old ways and they promote a new style of
leadership which discards subservience to and
acceptance of American or Western dominance.
At the same time, this is also an era in
which the primacy of Islam has become an essential
ingredient of Middle East politics. The 1979
Islamic Revolution of Iran established the trend.
The Islamization of Pakistan in the 1970s and
1980s and the liberation of Afghanistan from the
Soviets by the Afghan mujahideen in 1989 through
the use of jihad - with the active participation
of the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - made their
momentous contributions to the making of the new
era.
The September 11, 2001, attack saw
the US emerge as the chief antagonist of
Islamists. In the ensuing "war on terror", both
sides made their versions of morality quite clear
to their respective audiences. The US called the
advocates of attacks on its territory, assets and
personnel "terrorists", while the Islamists
envisioned themselves as jihadis, conducting a
holy war against the chief "infidel". They regard
the chief purpose of their fight as a defense of
their religion.
The emergence of
Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah and Muqtada should be
examined in this context, that is, the US is the
chief enemy of their countries and of Islam.
Ahmadinejad, by adopting harsh anti-American
rhetoric, has further escalated his country's
long-standing cold war with the US. Iran's
heightened proactivism in the post-Saddam Hussein
Iraq - which the US depicts as "interference", as
if its own invasion of Iraq was not an
interference of the worst kind - became just
another reason for the deterioration of US-Iran
ties, to a large degree focussed on its dogged
pursuit of a nuclear program and acquisition of
long-range ballistic missiles.
Nasrallah's
33-day war with Israel in the summer destroyed the
myth of the invincibility of the Israeli military.
In addition, it created a powerful perception that
Hezbollah emerged as victorious, simply because it
could not be destroyed as a fighting force.
Iran and Syria also emerged as "victors"
from this conflict because both of them -
especially Iran - had played a crucial role in
training Hezbollah fighters and supplying them
with rockets and short-range Katushya rockets that
caused considerable terror inside Israel during
the war.
Nasrallah decided to cash in on
the impressive performance of Hezbollah in its war
by insisting on acquiring additional political
power in Lebanon at the expense of the US-backed
government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. This
struggle is further complicated by Syria
maneuvering to reestablish its political
influence, which was shattered when it withdraw
from Lebanon.
Nasrallah's fight is still
in progress. What favors him is that he can afford
to absorb human losses in the pursuit of his
political objectives - as he proved in the war
against Israel.
The US, on the contrary,
as a result of its bloody occupation of Iraq, will
not want to send any troops to Lebanon. They will
also be painfully mindful of the deaths of 241
marines in 1983 in Lebanon at the hands of a
Shi'ite suicide bomber.
Nasrallah also
wishes to make Hezbollah a permanent military
force in Lebanon. The US and Israel are determined
to prevent this and will conspire to defeat
Nasrallah politically.
Muqtada, like
Nasrallah in Lebanon, is an iconic leader. Like
Nasrallah - whom he admires and attempts to
emulate - Muqtada
