councilor.org
| Source | Jim Devine |
| Date | 06/09/14/00:33 |
| Truth in the prediction
The 'clash of civilizations' theory seems to be gaining ground - which one reason why the west shouldn't intervene in Darfur. David Rieff September 13, 2006 03:45 PM | Guardian IN THE WAKE OF THE demands by the Sudanese government for African peacekeepers to leave Darfur and Khartoum's refusal to accept any deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in their stead, let alone an American or a Nato deployment, the fear that a new round of slaughter instigated by Khartoum is about to begin has led many decent people to call for western intervention. For activists, Darfur is Rwanda all over again and, they argue with great passion and seriousness, just as it was a moral imperative to intervene to stop the genocide in Rwanda (and a blot on the world that such an intervention did not take place), so the slaughter in Darfur must be stopped by any means necessary. Perhaps they are right. But one of the many catastrophes that have resulted from the Anglo-American folly in Iraq, and the proclamation of a so-called global war on terrorism by both the Bush administration and the Blair government, is that such an intervention, however imperative for the people of Darfur, may also have the effect of pushing the world deeper into a civilization-based crisis that really might lead to a third world war between the west and the Islamic world. When Samuel Huntington's controversial theory about a global "clash of civilizations", in which he suggested that in the post-Cold War world such clashes were likely to be "particularly prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims", was first published in 1993 there was no particular reason to suppose that he was right. To be sure, some of the most savage conflicts of the early 1990s, above all in Bosnia and Chechnya, could have been interpreted as pitting Christianity against Islam, but what was actually taking place on the ground both in the Balkans and the Caucasus largely did not conform to Huntington's apocalyptic reductionism. There were foreign jihadist fighters on the Bosnian government side, but they were hardly representative of the Bosnian government for which they ostensibly fought, let alone of Bosnian society as a whole. And, in 1993 at least, the Chechen struggle was largely nationalist - as it had been since the time of Tolstoy and before. But in only a little more than a decade, Huntington's prediction has become fact, at least in the minds of many people both in the west and in the Islamic world. Jihadists had always been drawn to the Huntington thesis (I first heard of it in 1994 in Bosnia from the commander of the Black Swans, an Islamist unit largely made up of orphans from the Drina Valley). There is little doubt that the leadership of al-Qaida views the world in these terms. It is also a view shared by increasing numbers of people who in no way support terrorism throughout the Islamic world. Recent polling data suggests that Muslim immigrants in Europe and, increasingly in North America, view themselves as under attack as Muslims - that is, civilizationally. Those who support the so-called global war on terror talk about a "long war" against radical Islamism. For his part, Tony Blair may claim that what is taking place is not a clash of civilizations but rather of values. Both the prime minister and President Bush view western values as universal and unassailable (no Isaiah-Berlin style values, pluralism or incommensurability for them!), and their supporters, as pro-Blair or pro-Bush blogs will confirm, feel strongly that the west is under attack from radical Islam abroad and its immigrant fifth column at home. Many Muslims feel that the west has launched a new crusade against the Ummah. Given all this, it is hard to see how the view in Downing Street or at the White House does not amount to pretty much the same thing. This is the context in which the renewed calls for an American or a Nato deployment in Darfur has to be situated, much as one might wish it otherwise. An intervention on behalf of the Bosnian Muslims would not have been a terrible blow to world peace any more than an intervention to stop the genocide in Rwanda would have been. But the deployment of a Christian army in yet another Muslim country, whatever its humanitarian intentions, will deal just such a blow to what peace is left at present. A Darfur activist would reply that none of this matters - that what counts is saving the lives of the Darfuris. Perhaps they are right. But those who make this case seriously cannot be allowed to get around the hard question that these times impose: how many lives in other parts of the world, from Kabul to London, is such an intervention likely to cost? |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho