By James Poulos on 5.25.06 @ 12:07AM
Islamism rushes into Africa, where the West still fears to tread.
IN SPITE OF THE varying degrees of anguish available to the
close observer of news in Iraq, the decision to take military
action against Saddam Hussein was by all accounts easy. So easy it
was that three presidents made it, under changing but steadily
compounding circumstances, and though Chirac's France was able to
stuff its head in the sand and declare veto on any
coercive enforcement of Resolution 1441, few and far between have
been American politicians of any stripe who couldn't understand
that Iraq was a standing problem about which the United States was
able and obligated to do something.
Contrast that situation against the one entrenching itself with
unmitigated anguish in Sudan -- specifically, in Darfur, that part
of the country where a spoonful of genocide is required to make the
Islamism go down. There, the inhuman spectacle of intrastate
butchery that would have been Saddam's legacy under any
circumstance has held rapt the attention of an uncomfortable world,
while also seizing the community of nations in a talkative
paralysis. Yet, and not at all strangely, there is one segment of
planetary opinion which has had no trouble at all finding the
motivation to act in Sudan -- and act in the sort of concert it has
often attempted but not quite achieved since the days of Suleiman
the Magnificent.
I speak, of course, of the forces of imperial Islam, headed up
in Hydra fashion by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the fractured
triumvirate of bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Zarqawi. This quartet of
ingrates has succeeded in replacing the possibility of a seedling
Iraqi caliphate with the certainty of a disgraceful chaos that
kills many more Iraqis than it converts to the cause. Iranian
loyalists, al Qaeda dogmatists, and Sunni insurgents have made a
sham of Islamist unity identical in its bloody failure to the one
playing out in the Palestinian Territories, where Balkanized
allegiances have also forced the would-be princes of pan-Islamism
to turn away from the heart of their would-be imperium and look to
its periphery for the saving hope of victorious slaughter.
THAT SEARCH IS a tall order. There is not a single Muslim state
that is not bordered by at least one pro-American or U.S.-occupied
nation. But there are half-Muslim states that are outside the reach
of America's virtual empire -- places where the U.S. could project
force but won't. It is worth pondering that some of the sharpest
examples of such places lie at Islam's bleeding edges. Nigeria is
one of them, but is yet too far afield to rally the faithful of the
Middle East.
Sudan, on the other hand, recommends itself highly. Close enough
for local jihadists to reach from abroad, with a friendly,
heartless, and bloodthirsty government operating out of squalid
Khartoum, Sudan is bordered by a series of untouchables. No
expeditionary force -- either of human decency or Western
crusaderism -- can launch from probation-era Libya, lockdown Egypt,
basketcase Uganda or despotic Eritrea. Ethiopia and Congo are
likewise out of bounds. Djibouti, the Red Sea enclave where
American and French military tacticians address the Horn of Africa,
is too little too far for Sudan's sake, and easily flanked by a
wave of Nile-bound mujaheddin.
Therefore it comes as no surprise that within the space of a
single week this spring, bin Laden and Ahmadenijad both made
pointed overtures to Sudan, using the benighted land as a
third-ditch war magnet and proliferation point for radical losers
as well as nuclear weapons. Osama, in his latest State of the Jihad
Address, called on "mujahedeen and their supporters,
especially in Sudan and the Arab peninsula, to prepare for a long
war against the crusader plunderers in Western Sudan." Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir, meanwhile, was embraced in Iran with the
offer of freebies of mass destruction. "Iran's nuclear capability,"
Ayatollah Khamenei enthused before his honored guest, "is one
example of various scientific capabilities in the country."
Khamenei's magnanimous capstone: "The Islamic Republic of Iran is
prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of
its scientists." Think of it as horizontal synergy for the
Caliphate relaunch.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? Total social failure has always been Islamism's
time to shine, but in Sudan the circumstances are ripe for a
geopolitical crisis to join the humanitarian one. The key is the
Khartoum regime. Bill Berkeley's 2001 report on race, tribe, and
power in Africa, The Graves Are Not Yet Full, is still
authoritative. Before "Islamofascism" had earned its stripes,
Berkeley informs us, Sudanese spoke of "Islamic-Leninism" to
describe the cruel, cunning rise of Hassan al-Turabi, the
mild-mannered lawyer with the Sorbonne doctorate who orchestrated
al-Bashir's 1989 coup when the President was still a general. In
2001, Turabi told Berkeley that the power vacuum in Sudan "is being
filled by an Islamist spirit. I just happened naturally to have
been on the track where history is moving."
But Turabi's track was self-aggrandizement through money and
power, the product of the war and genocide for which Islam made
such a "potent symbol" and "lever" of popular will. Today, Turabi
is on the outs, fresh from a half-decade stint in Sudanese jail. In
keeping with the upset of his political power, Turabi's politics
have flipped. The Financial Times has quoted him
bemusedly:
If you allow freedom, anyone who appears with a very
exceptional, extreme view, his views will not sell actually. He
would realize he is isolating himself so he has to integrate into
society by moderating his programs and his attitudes. That is
better for us and better for humanity.
Color me skeptical. For men like Turabi, Milosevic, and Mao,
ideology -- including religious ideology -- is the mask that gives
a human face to the lust for power beneath, indifferent to the name
in which it is enjoyed. Khartoum is run by such men. We may not be
interested in an intervention in Sudan, but those already
intervening there are interested in us. The real trial of American
power will come when, for the first time since the Barbary Wars,
Africa is used as a base of attack against the United States. As
daunting as it is to head such a calamity off at the pass, the
alternative will be even worse. Yet the saving deployment of
American foot soldiers is an impossibility of the practical
imagination. That the United States cannot rush solo to the rescue
of Sudan should spur fellow enthusiasts of civilization -- on
continents other than yours and mine -- into inspired and decisive
action. Alas, I fear, I must ask you to get out your crayons again.
James G. Poulos is a writer and attorney living in
Washington, D.C. His commentaries are found at Postmodern
Conservative.
topics:
Islam, Law, Military, Iraq, Iran, Africa, Fascism, Nuclear Weapons
