Several days ago The New York Times revealed a historic shift in US foreign
policy, saying “the Obama administration has begun to reverse decades of
mistrust and hostility as it seeks to forge closer ties” with the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood, once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to US
interests.
The move was attributed to the new political reality, the
results of three rounds of elections in Egypt which project the Muslim
Brotherhood as the winners of the majority in the new parliament. It was also
made possible by the Brotherhood’s “moderate messages,” including the promise to
build a “modern democracy that will respect individual freedoms, free markets
and international commitments, including Egypt’s treaty with Israel.”
But
what’s really new about this? For decades the US has had deep strategic,
military and economic relations with Saudi Arabia, a theocratic regime which has
a much more obscurantist Islamist policy than the one proposed by the
Brotherhood in its official program (not the one presented to the Egyptian and
foreign public in its platform before the elections).
The US also
provided military support, albeit indirectly, to the mujihadeen fighting the
Soviet invaders in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
What’s really new here is
the obliviousness and naïve, wishful thinking evinced by the American policy
makers and intellectuals proposing this “rapprochement” with the Islamist
movements in the Arab world, which hijacked the uprisings of the young Arab
modernist forces in Tunisia and Egypt and will probably do the same in Libya and
Syria.
The mujihadeen of Afghanistan fell under the influence of Abdullah
Azzam, the ideologue of the jihadist global movement and the mentor of Osama bin
Laden. Azzam’s concept of “al-Qa’ida al-Sulbah,” or “the solid base” of the
jihadi vanguard was the source of the al-Qaida organization’s
name.
Abdullah Azzam visited the United States in the late 1980s, before
the end of the war in Afghanistan and the withdrawal of the Soviet forces, and
preached jihad against America.
When the Taliban took control of
Afghanistan in 1995-96, Saudi Arabia gave it financial support and diplomatic
recognition, despite the Taliban’s permission for bin Laden to train
anti-American and anti-Saudi young jihadists on Afghani
soil.
Surprisingly, al-Qaida never attacked Saudi interests before the
American occupation of Iraq in spring 2003.
It is also surprising that 15
of the 19 hijackers who attacked the US on September 11, 2001 were
Saudis.
The 9/11 Commission identified eight more al-Qaida operatives who
had been personally chosen by bin Laden to participate in the hijackings, but
who for a variety of reasons dropped out of the plot.
Saudis have been
involved in every major terrorist attack against the United States, in Saudi
Arabia itself and elsewhere: the Saudi National Guard bombing in November 1995,
the Khobar Towers bombing in June 1996, the Nairobi embassy bombing in August
1998, the USS Cole bombing in October 2000, and, of course, September
11.
Moreover, Saudi nationals have played a leading role in financing the
al-Qaida infrastructure and its terrorist attacks and have also funded the Sunni
insurgency in Iraq against the American and coalition forces. Some 70 percent of
the suicide bombers in Iraq were Saudis.
Apologists for the Bush
administration’s foreign policy toward Saudi Arabia claimed that “despite all
their shortcomings” Saudi Arabia was a willing partner in the fight against the
mutual threat represented by al-Qaida.
WILL THE Muslim Brotherhood be a
willing partner in the democratization of Egypt and the Arab world at large? The
double-talk of its leaders does not bode well for the future. Their promises at
the beginning of the uprising in Egypt to run only for 35% of the parliament
seats look today like a farcical joke. Ibrahim Munir, a spokesman for the
Brotherhood, has denied that the group has given any assurances to Washington
about respecting the agreement with Israel.
Essam al-Erian, deputy head
of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, declared that the Brotherhood is
“not in a position to give assurances.”
Brotherhood leader Mohammed
Badie, who met recently with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh during the
latter’s visit to Cairo, declared that the “Brotherhood has always embraced
issues of liberation, foremost the Palestinian issue,” and that Hamas has served
as a role model to the Brotherhood. Haniyeh described Hamas as the “jihadi
movement of the Brotherhood with a Palestinian face” and claimed his visit to
the Brotherhood center would confuse and frighten “the Israeli
entity.”
In Israel, too, some respected voices have proposed talking to
Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the name of realpolitik. The new
Israeli ambassador to Cairo has been instructed to look for contacts with the
Brotherhood leaders.
In the past Israel has been accused of “inventing”
Hamas and supporting its activities. In fact, as far back as the 1970s Israeli
authorities permitted Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood factions in Gaza and the
West Bank to act openly on the religious, social and economic level [so-called
da’wa activities] as they did not engage at that time in terrorism like their
secular comrades.
The Israeli political and military establishment did
not take seriously the declarations of the then-Muslim Brotherhood leaders that
they were preparing a new generation of young jihadi fighters for the liberation
of Palestine for the purpose of creating an Islamic state.
Only in 1985
had it become clear that the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood was preparing for
“armed struggle,” but the arrest of its leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin did not stop
the militarization process which led to the metamorphosis of the movement in the
Hamas terrorist organization at the opening of the first intifada in
1987.
Hamas, together with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad [another faction
of the Muslim Brotherhood which became a proxy of the Tehran regime] was
responsible for the waves of suicide bombings in the mid- 1990s, in the
aftermath of the Oslo peace agreement. That sabotaged the sensitive relationship
between Israel and the Palestinians, and during the second bloody intifada
derailed the chances for a negotiated solution.
The Brotherhood victory
in Egypt presents a serious dilemma indeed for US, European and Israeli leaders
alike. They probably have no alternative but to engage with the new Islamist
leaders who will control the leading Arab country and the less important
ones.
The question is whether they will be able to challenge the
Brotherhood’s Islamist radical religious worldview and autocratic tendencies as
it attempts to impose them on the Arab peoples and lead the region to an
obscurantist era, in sharp conflict with Western democratic and liberal
values.
The writer is a senior research scholar at the International
Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) and The Institute for Policy and Strategy
(IPS) at The Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya
|