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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Robert Dreyfuss explains how America's meddling in the Middle East unleashed the current deadly wave of Islamic fundamentalism.
Nov 28, 2005 | History can be a truly explosive force when it's connected tightly to contemporary events. The linkage of Islam, terrorism and the war in Iraq has a deep and vivid history, with the potential to hit the American public like a roadside bomb, but it has gone largely untold, emerging only in bits and pieces -- until now. "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" digs up the knotty roots of Islamist violence, exhuming the deep, dirty story behind the "war on terror."
Part of the story has been told before, in newspaper and magazine articles that put together some of its many pieces. But with "Devil's Game," author Robert Dreyfuss has written what may be the most clear and engaging history of the deadly, historic partnership between Western powers and political Islam. Dreyfuss, who covers national security for Rolling Stone, delves deep into the explosive mix of shrewd realpolitik and raw, ignorant fervor that helped fuel the worldwide enterprise of radical Islam and create the extremist theocracies that hold sway today in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The book is a chronicle of mistakes made, opportunities lost, and lessons most vividly not learned. It's also the story of the historical error that has come to define U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world: the Machiavellian use of political Islam as a sword and shield against communism and Arab nationalism. Contextualized by the modern-day neoconservative push for war with Iraq, "Devil's Game" records the long and sordid history of right-wing and hard-line elements in the U.S. government finding common cause with fundamentalist groups in the Middle East.
For instance: In a chapter on the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan, Dreyfuss describes how the United States deliberately channeled money to the "nastier, more fanatic types of mujahideen" in Afghanistan (to quote Stephen P. Cohen, a former top State Department official) in order to do the most damage to Soviet occupiers. Among the nastiest: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who won the confidence of his Pakistani and CIA backers in part by skinning prisoners alive and approving the practice of throwing acid in the faces of women who failed to cover themselves properly. After 9/11, Hekmatyar would resurface as an ally of the Taliban and a bitter opponent of U.S. occupiers.
"Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam"
By Robert Dreyfuss
Metropolitan Books
400 pages
Nonfiction
Dreyfuss also reveals how Israel helped to create and empower the forerunners of Hamas as a bulwark against Palestinian nationalism (as embodied by Yasser Arafat and the PLO). The Likud-Hamas link -- with both organizations thriving in unstable, warlike environments -- is sure to be one of the book's most controversial points, and it is a disturbing parallel to the "blowback" the United States suffered by backing bin Laden and his fellow "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan. Dreyfuss also uncovers how Citibank and Harvard University, among other international players, helped create the Islamic banking system that would act as the financial battery for the Energizer Bunny of violent anti-Western Islamism.
Along the way, Dreyfuss replays long-buried quotes from top American military and intelligence officials that illuminate the shadowy origins of America's current foreign policy. When asked about the rise of the Taliban in 1996,President Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, offers this thoughtful rejoinder:
"What is more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
Using the hammer blows of history and polemic, Dreyfuss suggests that "some stirred-up Muslims" may turn out to be something of a problem, after all.
"Devil's Game" is a book likely to appeal to those who defend the purity of means despite the urgency of the ends. By feeding the monster of militant Islamism to fulfill short-term goals, Dreyfuss argues, the United States helped unleash the most challenging foreign policy crisis of the new millennium. Salon caught up with Dreyfuss recently to discuss the campaign to isolate Syria, the disastrous impact of the war in Iraq, and the pressing need to reduce the U.S. presence in the Middle East.
Tell me about the genesis of "Devil's Game" -- why this topic, and why right now?
Since 9/11, like a lot of reporters, I've been focusing pretty heavily on Iraq, the Middle East, Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, and lots of intelligence issues. In this case the publisher actually called me and asked me if I had any book ideas, and I'd been thinking about this in the following terms: a lot of people saw what happened on 9/11 as some kind of blowback. There was talk about the origins of bin Laden in Afghanistan. What I know about the Middle East is that the blowback goes back much farther than just Afghanistan.
In other words, Osama bin Laden didn't just emerge from Zeus' brain in the middle of Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. He sprang out of a movement of ideologues, of fundamentalists, of salafists, that goes back really into the 19th century, and if you wanted to be historical about it, you could trace it back to the 11th century or even before that.
What fed this movement? How did it move from the fringes to its current place of global influence?
Really, in the modern era, this began with the forebears of the Muslim Brotherhood who began organizing in the late 19th century. Their enemies were first and foremost the leftists and nationalists in the Muslim world, especially in the Arab world, but also in India and Turkey and elsewhere. And on a broader scale, they were fiercely anti-communist. On religious grounds, I think, first of all. Communism was atheism in their minds.
So for these two reasons, because they were anti-communist and because they were anti-nationalist, they became allies of convenience with first the colonial powers, and then later with the United States once the United States inherited primacy in the Middle East after World War II. And so here comes this big dumb giant, the United States, with literally zero background in understanding the Middle East. With no Middle East academic programs at any of its universities including the Ivy League, with no experience in the region. And the United States stumbles into this region as the chief guarantor and protector of Western interests and stability, and so we found ourselves time and time again over the decades in league with political Islam.
That's the story I wanted to tell. That's where the real legacy of blunders and stupidity and, in some cases, actually deliberate malfeasance is recorded.
