Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (No Series)

by Scheuer, Michael

  Bangladesh: A country known in the West largely for its poverty and its recurrent, massive natural disasters, Bangladesh is the world’s third most populous Muslim country, with a population of 152 million, 88 percent of which is Muslim.46 After gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971, the first Bangladesh government declared the country a secular state, and Islam there remained “more relaxed” than in the Arab world and “overwhelmingly moderate” for most of the rest of the century. Even today, for example, the leaders of the two major political parties are women.47 In 2001, however, Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia tempered secularism by inserting in the constitution that Bangladesh would be ruled according to “the sovereignty of Allah.”48 This switch occurred after Zia had formed an electoral alliance between her Bangladesh National Party and two Saudi-backed Islamist political parties (Jamaat-e Islami and Islamic Oika Jote) and defeated the rival Awami League. Like other such cooptation attempts in the Muslim world, Zia’s successful 2001 effort provided her coalition with the margin of victory but created a postelection environment in which Islamists have made significant organizational and political advances across the country. By mid-2005, for example, at least fifty-eight militant Islamic networks had been identified in Bangladesh.49

  Zia’s admission of the Islamists into her government helped to accelerate the gains they had been making since the end of the Afghan-Soviet war in 1989. The significant number of Bangladeshis who fought in that jihad brought back and spread a more militant and militaristic brand of Islam, and they brought in their trail Islamist NGOs and Salafi and Wahhabi missionaries from the Arabian Peninsula, especially from Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and Kuwait. Some Bangladeshis, including the recently executed insurgent leader Bangla Bhai, trained in al-Qaeda and Taliban training camps in the late 1990s. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, moreover, have been assisting the Bangladeshi Islamists with their domestic organizational efforts for more than a decade.50 Adding to the proselytizing power of these Islamist entities have been Bangladeshis who returned home after serving a “tour of duty” as workers in the states of the Arabian Peninsula, during which they worshipped according to Wahhabi or Salafi doctrine. This large two-way flow of workers—at any given time nearly a million Bangladeshis work in Saudi Arabia—has accelerated the shift of moderate Bangladeshi Islam toward the militancy common across the Arab world.51 Pakistani and Saudi charities have emerged as major benefactors for education in Bangladesh, offering scholarships for universities in their countries and providing funding for the building and staffing of religious schools and madrassas in Bangladesh. Islamist NGOs such as Kuwait’s Society for the Revival of the Islamic Heritage and others based in the Arabian Peninsula and Pakistan, for example, have funded the creation of thousands of Salafist-and Wahhabist-oriented madrassas for primary and secondary students across Bangladesh.52

  The pace of Islamist militancy and violence in Bangladesh has increased significantly during the past five years, and while Prime Minister Zia pledged to “crush” it, she has not and her political future depends on Islamist support.53 In addition, the Islamists may already have struck such deep roots that they are now a permanent player in the country’s politics. Native Islamists and foreign Islamist missionaries have focused on rural Bangladesh and have made great strides there by providing social services and education.54 The militarization of Bangladeshi Islamists also appears to be increasing as a consequence of the Taliban fighters who arrived after the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the Bangladeshi Islamists’ longstanding ties to Burma’s Islamist Rohingya and Arakan organizations of Islamist insurgents.55 The growth of Islamist strength in Bangladesh and the enormous corruption of the society suggest that the country has the potential to serve as a hub from which Islamist groups can base and operate. Media reports claim that Islamist military training camps already are operating in the rough terrain of the Chittagong Hills. The Indian government, moreover, claims that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID) trains Indian Islamists and other secular Indian insurgent groups, such as the United Liberation Front of Assam, in Bangladeshi camps. The country’s porous 4,100-kilometer border with India also provides easy entry for Arab missionaries seeking to radicalize India’s huge Muslim population.56

  For the United States and its war against Islamist insurgency, Bangladesh is a disaster in the making, and one that Washington can do little about. In 2007, an unelected caretaker government—supported by the military—took over at the end of Zia’s term; regularly scheduled elections in Bangladesh have been delayed; violence has flared repeatedly in Dhaka’s streets; and the opposition Awami League has recruited six Islamists to run for parliament and has formed an alliance with the Bangladesh Khelefat party, an Islamist party headed by two Bangladeshi veterans of the Afghan-Soviet war. With both major national parties now cooperating with the Islamists; a level of corruption that makes the country an ideal base for illicit commercial and financial activities that facilitate Islamist military operations; porous land and sea borders; a rapidly Islamicizing educational system; and the steady flow of funding for Islamists from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, Bangladesh is set to become a regional hub for Islamist activities and a geographical link between groups in South Asia and those in the Far East.57

  Nigeria: Nigeria is home to more Muslims than Egypt. With a population of about 140 million people—divided nearly equally between Muslims and Christians—Nigeria has seen a steady growth in Islamist militancy since its Muslim-dominated northern provinces began in 1999–2000 to rule according to sharia law.58 With this growth has come a steady increase in sectarian strife and violence between militant Christians, mostly Anglicans, and Muslims; the violence has been vicious on both sides, including the burning of mosques and churches, the killing of women and children, and the disfiguring, dismembering, and burning of corpses.59 As in Bangladesh, moreover, Islamist NGOs and missionaries supported by Saudi Arabia and other Muslim states have been very active in Nigeria and most of West Africa since the early 1990s, and Nigeria’s Islam is taking on the militant tones of the theology that the NGOs preach. “You go there [to Nigeria],” according to a human rights organization, “and you’ll find the Saudis, and you’ll find the Sudanese there, you find the Libyans there, you find Syrians there, Pakistanis there, and it’s all part of worldwide Islamization.”60 In 2003, bin Laden declared Nigeria to be ready for an Islamic takeover, and since then UN investigators have claimed that al-Qaeda has recruiting and training bases in the country.61 In late November 2007, Nigerian authorities arrested an al-Qaeda-related cell that had trained in Algerian Salafist camps and intended to bomb government buildings.

  For the United States, Nigeria’s deepening Christian-vs.-Muslim conflict is an issue of escalating importance because Nigeria is home to the largest energy industry in Africa. Estimates show that the country has an oil reserve of about 36 billion barrels and natural gas reserves of 184 trillion cubic feet, all of it located in the Niger Delta, a 27,000-square-mile area of swamp and mangrove forest.62 In 2006, Nigeria was the fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States, and it and the other oil fields in the Gulf of Guinea are expected to provide the United States with 25 percent of its oil by 2012 or 2013.63 Washington has recognized the importance of Nigerian oil to the U.S. economy and in 2002 declared oil reserves there and across Africa to be a “strategic national interest” that would be secured by the U.S. military if necessary. To date, Washington has supplied the Nigerian military with radars, communications gear, and boats for coastal defense, and U.S. forces, with the British military, have trained Nigerian naval personnel in maritime warfare operations.64 In 2005, President George W. Bush met with the Nigerian president and assured him of America’s commitment to maintaining political stability in the country, but so far Washington has refused Nigeria’s late-2006 request for the deployment of U.S. Marines to the Niger Delta to counter insurgent activities.65

  The oil-producing Niger Delta is located in Nigeria’s Christian-dominated south, bu
t over the past decade a shadowy and quasi-Islamist group known as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has undertaken violent activities aimed at destroying the Nigerian government’s ability to export crude oil. In an e-mail message sent to Reuters in midsummer 2006 MEND declared, “We are resuming an all-out war on the eastern sector [of the Niger Delta] with an aim to wiping out fields there and the export terminals.”66 Although operating in an overwhelmingly Christian population, MEND fighters have taken advantage of local resentment toward the central government for its failure to use oil revenues to develop the area and relieve its intense poverty.67 In an area where rivalry between rebel factions has traditionally been intense—there are up to 120 militant groups operating in the Niger Delta—a degree of cooperation is now emerging under MEND’s leadership. Armed with such Afghan-jihad-type weapons as AK-47s, heavy machine guns, and RPGs (this seems to be another set of potential U.S. enemies who are not abiding by the rules of the Revolution in Military Affairs) and conducting kidnappings for ransom, attacks on energy infrastructure, ambushes, and a few car bombings, MEND has proven itself able to severely disrupt oil production and export. In the first eight months of 2006, for example, the activities of MEND and its associates reduced Nigerian oil exports by approximately a half-million barrels per day. And in the year between April 2006 and April 2007, Nigeria lost an estimated 12 billion dollars in oil sales due to the actions of MEND and other groups.68

  Although the Islamist presence and influence in the Niger Delta seems now to be quite limited,69 MEND and other insurgent groups have had a major impact on Nigeria’s oil production. The emerging Islamist tone of MEND’s rhetoric, the escalating violence of the overall Christian-Muslim relationship in Nigeria, and bin Laden’s placing of Nigeria on al-Qaeda’s target list all portend a threat to reliable U.S. access to the Niger Delta’s energy resources. Of the many locations where U.S. forces may have to intervene to secure oil supplies, the prospect of doing so in the Niger Delta may be the most appallingly difficult and bloody. Why? Because of the topography, the dispersed condition of the energy industry’s infrastructure, and diversity of the local population.

  One of the most obvious military obstacles in the Niger Delta is terrain. According to the Niger Delta Development Commission, the delta is the world’s largest wetland and is composed of 27,000 square kilometers of dense mangrove swamps and waterways, making it an ideal location for guerilla operations.70

  The sheer number of oil installations also makes protection of the infrastructure difficult. Shell, which is the largest foreign oil company in Nigeria, has more than 1,000 oil wells, 90 oil fields, and 73 flow stations in the delta region, and these wells are linked to a 6,000-kilometer pipeline network.71

  Some 20 million Nigerians, from 50 different ethnic groups, speaking 250 dialects, across 3,000 communities live in the Niger Delta. 70 percent of these people live on less than one dollar per day.72

  Thailand: For most of the post-1945 period, the peoples of Thailand’s Muslim-dominated southern provinces have resented what they believe is discrimination against their region’s economy and society by the Buddhist-dominated government in Bangkok, leaving the south as the country’s most impoverished area. Other sources of resentment lie in Bangkok’s refusal to officially recognize the Thai Muslims’ language, culture, and Malay ethnicity, its failure to ever appoint a Muslim provincial governor in the south, and its stationing of Buddhist military units in the south to maintain order and coerce assimilation. The behavior of these units toward the population, particularly women, has not always been exemplary.73 And as in Nigeria and Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have been active in sending Islamist NGOs and missionaries to proselytize among the Muslims in the south and have likewise funded local Islamist organizations. Similar support for Thai Muslims also appears to be flowing in from donors in Indonesia and Malaysia.74

  Since the late 1960s, armed Muslim resistance has flared sporadically in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat; in the 1990s this violence was in part the responsibility of Thai Muslims returning from the Afghans’ war against the USSR. This violence took a broader and more sustained turn in late 2003 and early 2004. As violence escalated, then-Thai prime minister Thaksin’s government took a hard line against the Islamists, reinforcing Thai forces in the south and giving them a free and brutal hand in dealing with both insurgents and civilians; declaring what amounted to martial law in much of the south in July 2005; and ruling out talks with Thai Muslims about the possibility of autonomy for the southern provinces, which for the five hundred years prior to 1909 formed an independent Islamic sultanate.75

  With Thaksin’s hard-line policies, the military’s aggressiveness, and a casualty total approaching two thousand dead, several Thai generals deposed Thaksin in a coup in September 2006. Thaksin was replaced by General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, a Muslim, who immediately launched a policy-oriented effort to defuse Muslim animosities and stop the insurgency. Sonthi visited the region twice, offered an “unqualified apology” for the Thai military’s excesses, offered the southern provinces increased autonomy, and expressed a willingness to allow sharia law to be used there. Sonthi has been so forthcoming, in fact, that some Buddhist politicians have criticized him for appeasing the Islamist militants. So far, however, the Thai insurgents have responded with continuing violence—claiming five more years of war are needed before talks can begin—suggesting that their goal may have escalated from autonomy within Thailand to independence for the southern provinces. The insurgents have created large areas in the south where they operate with impunity and are also in the midst of moving attacks into Buddhist-dominated areas of Thailand; they may have, for example, detonated eight bombs in Bangkok on New Year’s Eve 2006, killing 8 and wounding 36, which caused General Sonthi to return early from making the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. And over the course of 2007, General Boonyaratglin gradually backed away from his carrot-and-stick policy and by midyear had ordered the resumption of large-scale military operations against insurgent networks.76

  For the United States, the Thai insurgency could ultimately require the provision of military assistance if the stability of the Bangkok regime is threatened. Under Cold War–era multilateral and bilateral agreements—the Manila Pact of 1954 and the Thanat-Rusk Communiqué of 1962—Washington appears committed to assisting the Thai government to prevent its defeat. U.S. policymakers added a much greater commitment of American prestige and credibility to those agreements when they designated Thailand a “Major Non-NATO Ally” in December 2003. In a less quantifiable category, Washington’s support for the Thai also is predicated on memories of Thai forces fighting alongside the U.S. military in the Vietnam War. Under the noted accords, the U.S. military has used Thai airbases, worked with Thai forces on Thai territory to stem the narcotics flow from the Golden Triangle, and established stockpiles of prepositioned, war-reserve munitions in the country. In addition, U.S. forces have equipped and trained Thai forces and regularly perform exercises with them.77

  With a bilateral military cooperation agreement based on dated Cold War requirements, Washington may be committed to respond positively to a Thai request for military help against the Islamist insurgency. While this is clearly a worst-case scenario, even the bare possibility of U.S. involvement in Vietnam-like jungle combat—which would in turn draw other regional Islamist fighters to Thailand like a magnet—ought to give U.S. policymakers pause to reconsider its leftover Cold War commitments not only in Thailand but also across the international board.

  Somalia: Somalia is an overwhelmingly Muslim East African country of no particular strategic importance to the United States. Without a government since Prime Minister Muhammad Barre was overthrown in 1991, the country has been the scene of unending anarchy, tribal warfare, and starvation.78 President George H. W. Bush’s ill-considered, New World Order–building decision to lead a UN humanitarian intervention there in 1992 ended with a few dozen U.S. military casualti
es and an ignominious Clinton-ordered retreat in March 1994. The evacuation of U.S.-led intervention forces was followed by a decade of intra-Somali warfare between and among ruthless, well-armed warlords, as well as by an influx of Arabs and their money—especially Saudis and Saudi money—which together worked to move Somali Muslims toward a greater adherence to Salafism and Wahhabism and some of their leaders to aspire to form an Islamic state.79

  The patient and bloody effort of Somali Islamists and their Arab supporters seemed to be helping Somalia to right itself in June 2006, when Islamist leaders, working together under the umbrella of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), took control of Mogadishu from more secular Somali warlords. Over the following months the ICU imposed a harsh sharia-based rule that brought some stability to Somalia for the first time since 1991.80 Turning its back on a useful measure of stability in the Horn of Africa, which is home to more than 90 million Muslims, Washington backed the December 24, 2006, invasion of Somalia by the Ethiopian military. U.S. officials argued that Addis Ababa’s action was based on its “genuine security concerns,” but at least as important in Washington’s decision was its still dominant Cold War–era lust for finding proxies to do America’s dirty work. The Ethiopians quickly overthrew the ICU and installed Prime Minsiter Ali Mohamed Gedi’s secular, UN-backed Somali Transitional Federal Government that had been based in Baidoa. At this writing, Gedi has resigned and the regime—now led by President Abdullahi Yusuf—seems destined to become dependent, after the Ethiopians withdraw, on the same Somali warlords that the ICU defeated in 2006.81 The Somali Islamists’ anger over Washington’s public support for the Christian Ethiopians’ invasion, moreover, was sharpened by the simultaneous U.S. air strikes aimed at three al-Qaeda leaders reported to be near Hayo, in southernmost Somalia near the Kenyan border.82 Taken together, the invasion and the air strikes have strengthened the Somali Islamist leaders’ belief that the United States intends to destroy their faith, and the likely result seems to be that the ICU chiefs (whose forces and ordnance were dispersed not destroyed) will start an insurgency against the UN-supported Somali regime and perhaps launch terrorist operations inside Ethiopia and Kenya and against the U.S. Special Forces base at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti.83