International Relations after September 11th War in the times of peace (Apersonal summary) [Archives:2002/47/Focus]

BY MICHEL LANDECK
On November 2nd and 3rd 2002 scholars from England, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Yemen met at a conference on the international relations after September 11th at the Sana’a Sheraton. It was organized under the auspices of President Ali Abdullah Saleh by the Centre Francais d’Archeologie et de Sciences Sociales de Sana’a, the Yemeni Center for Studies and Research, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. The title of the conference was “War in the Times of Peace”.
What does this title tell us? It is obviously dealing with the issue and the definition of terrorism after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and therefore dealing with the ideological construction “Bin Laden”. US-officials have “painted” a scenario of a global crisis, which consists of a 2-world model, in which the civilized world is confronting barbarianism, the free world is confronting tyranny and last but not least the Christian world is confronting the Islamic world.
Like Sabah Alnasseri, a lecturer at Frankfurt University, said, the new formula of the USA: World alliance vs. Bin Laden explains nothing less than that the definition of terrorism lies in the hands of the stronger one. The current US-administration provides the outline through which terror is labeled and identified. The State Terrorism (Chomsky) by the Israeli government in the Palestinian territories is apparently not included in the American definition of terrorism, whereas Iraq, after Afghanistan, stands next in line on the US-administration’s agenda of wiping out threats to the “civilized world” (the west).
In the Arab countries this proclaimed virtual conflict between the world alliance and Bin Laden leads us to the very real conflict between the authoritarian regimes and the Islamic movement, which in most Arab states constitutes the strongest, sometimes the only viable opposition which criticizes the rulers of lacking legitimacy, because they oppose the further democratization of the political system. The Bush administration’s simplified view of the conflict forces smaller states in the Middle East and elsewhere to be either with the USA or against them. For the region this means that the political regimes for example in Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which have chosen to cooperate with the USA in their war against terrorism, profit from their support through increased financial and military aid from the US. This leads to the most important question posed at the conference: Does external influence (by the US) put at risk the internal achievements in finding consensus in the societies (in the Middle East)?
In the aftermath of September 11th the authoritarian Arab regimes have used the global political climate as justification for a reinforced crush on the Islamic opposition, regardless of the movement’s diversity. Apart from certain political and ideological similarities the numerous Islamic groups and parties differ strongly in their strategies, their forms organization and in their social structure. The most important differentiation has to be made between radical Islamic groups, which promote violence to achieve their goals, and the moderate Islamic reform movement that is willing to work within the political system.
A dialogue with these Islamic groups and parties should be promoted. A further step towards democratization by legalizing the moderate Islamic opposition would undermine the position of the radical Islamic groups, which accuse the political regimes in the Middle East of being “jahili” (non-Muslim, pagan) and thereby justifying the necessity of a violent overthrow of these governments in the name of Islam.
The question is now: How can we achieve a further democratization in the region?
The speeches of two of the speakers at the conference, Abdelkarim al-Iriani (Political adviser to president Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former Yemeni prime minister) and Udo Steinbach (Director of the Deutsches Orient Institute, Hamburg, Germany), sum up the obstacles that prevent “real” democratization in the Middle East.
Al-Iriani stated that the main problem that stands in the way of a further democratization of Middle Eastern societies is the lack of freedom of thought, the lack of freedom in education and the lack of freedom of societal activity. While agreeing with al-Iriani on that point, Steinbach added that social forces in the region are not able to pursue social, political and economic development in the region freely.
US-foreign policy in the Middle East generally tends to be imperialistic in its scope and logic. After September 11th the US-administration has renewed its unconditional support of authoritarian regimes in the region that agreed to side with the US in the war against terror. As a result, not the populations of these regimes, but the elites in the state bureaucracy and their allies, decide over their legitimacy and their political survival.
In front of that background the increased support of civil society organizations in Middle Eastern countries by the EU would provide a desirable perspective in order to confront the US-policy in the region. What does the term civil society mean?
The concept of civil society emerged as part of the political theory (ideology) of neo-liberalism, which besides a free market economy also promotes an enlarged political participation. From the liberal perspective there exists a clear division between society and state and society is supposed to have a controlling function vs. the state. The term civil society describes exactly this relationship between society and the state, while perceiving their diverging interests as a natural fact. The position of the state in this concept is to monitor the conflicts between the different interest groups in society.
Despite much debate about the ideological uses and the definition of the civil society concept, most scholars agree that civil society generally consists of societal institutions like associations, clubs, syndicates, trade unions and political parties which are supposed to monitor the relations between society and the state. According to neo-liberal theory the existence of a strong civil society indicates democratization progress, because its existence implies the weakening of the state.
It is worth noticing that this is a too simplistic and positivistic assumption. Neo-marxist theory reminds us that in the capitalist political system the state institutions take on the task of co-opting the citizens in system. According to neo-marxist thought, this task in not restricted to the institutions formally belonging to the state, but extends to the institutions with are considered private in the jurisdictional sense. As a consequence, the societal institutions of civil society, which, according to the liberal perspective, help to control or reduce the power of the state, are actually in constant danger of being co-opted by the state, because the membership of citizens in institutions and organizations makes them controllable.
In the Arab world scholarly works on the topic of civil society have been published as early as the 1980’s. There are basically two different models of the concept of civil society, the secular and the Islamic one.
The secular Arab liberals see the concept of civil society as an alternative to the authoritarian political order in many Arab regimes as well as to the societal model drawn by the Islamic Intellectuals. As a consequence they exclude religious organizations from the participation in civil society. In general their conception of civil society stands in the classical tradition of liberal political thought.
In the point of view of the Islamic intellectuals, the basis of civil society, meaning the voluntary, intermediary institutions which represent the political, economical, social and cultural interests of society and which are supposed to be independent from the power of the state, do not stand in contradiction to an Islamic political order. The Islamic intellectuals use the term “mujtama al-ahli” (society of city) as an alternative to the western term civil society. The institutions of the ” mujtama” al-ahli” have the function to curtail the power of the state. In order to achieve that, the Islamic intellectuals demand the re-establishment of the power of these institutions like the mosques, the religious schools (madaris), the religious scholars (ulama), and the religious institutions (waqf). The moderate Islamists therefore do not reject the terms “civil society”, “democracy” and “pluralism”, but only try to incorporate them in the concept of an Islamic social order.
Even if the danger of the possibility of co-option of civil society organizations, by the political regimes in the Middle East is taken into account, the direct financial support of Non-government organizations (NGO’s) in the region, including the religiously motivated organizations, provides an alternative to the currently most popular system of channeling western development aid mainly through the state bureaucracies of authoritarian regimes in the developing world and thereby giving the elites a maximum of control in the development of society and excluding the majority of the people from the political decision-making process.
Identifying the events of September 11th in the larger context of violent protest against political and economic injustices in the Middle East due to the longevity of authoritarian regimes, and therefore increase the support of the democratization process in the region at the grassroots-level would enable western powers to fight the real origins of terror by peaceful means.
This approach could provide an opportunity for the EU to confront the unilateralism of the current US-administration, which aims at redrawing the global map as it pleases. A EU-policy along these lines, using its economic weight in order to establish a stronger political cooperation with the Middle East and also with Russia and China would enable the Union to finally live up its vision of a global multipolar power sharing system, which might lead to a more balanced and therefore a more just international political system.

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