The writer is an independent political and defence analyst. He is also the author of several books, monographs and articles on Pakistan and South Asian Affairs
The Iraq government faces a militant challenge in Anbar province where extremist and al Qaeda-type groups have recently established their domain in parts of that province. The sectarian issue has gained prominence in Iraq. Therefore, despite the fact that the US troops left Iraq some years ago, it has not seen stability in parts of its territory.
Libya has not seen stable peace after the overthrow of the government of Colonel Gaddafi and his assassination. Different tribal and fundamentalist groups are fighting each other and the weak Libyan government. Syria has been experiencing two-fold internal violence for the last three years, with a struggle for power between the Damascus government and its opponent armed groups supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The groups fighting against Bashar alAssad’s government are also fighting with each other. Some hardline groups with linkages with al Qaeda are also trying to eliminate their rival insurgent groups.
The internal conflict in Bahrain is a power struggle among two major groups: the government and anti-government groups. This has strong religio-sectarian colours because the majority of population is Shia which finds itself excluded from the power structure. Yemen is experiencing tribal and separatist challenges coupled with the increased activity of al Qaeda and its affiliated groups.
Egypt could not achieve stable peace after the removal of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. In 2013, the powerful Egyptian Army took control of the state by dislodging elected President Morsi who was backed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi assumed presidency in 2012 and used his powers to strengthen his party’s political and ideological control over the state and society in total disregard for other groups. This sharpened divisions in politics, enabling the military to knock out the Morsi government. The Muslim Brotherhood’s resistance to military rule did not succeed because the resistance was initiated only by Muslim Brotherhood’s hardcore. However, internal violence erupts from time to time.
Each country has its peculiar features of politics and society. Therefore, the details of the internal conflict vary from country to country but there are some common factors that are found in these Muslim countries, which show that several struggles are going on simultaneously. The first common factor in these Muslim states is the growing pressure of socio-economic injustice. Each state has an affluent class of people, mostly the rulers or their close associates. However, a large number of people suffer from poverty and underdevelopment with little hope of improvement of their conditions. These people have little attachment with the state and its political order. These alienated people are attracted to various appeals based on ethnicity, tribe, language and religion and religious sects. There is a crisis of leadership in these countries. Either the military provides leadership or a combination of military, bureaucracy and the affluent elite does. Their political appeal does not cut across various divisions in society. Consequently, the national framework is relegated to the background and people think in terms of identities smaller than the state.
The second common factor can be described as a pure and simple power struggle among competing interests where the tradition of constitutionalism and rule of law is poor or non-existent. Therefore, invocation of the law and constitution depends on the needs of a competing interest. Law and constitution are supported if these help a competing group to achieve its political objectives.
Third, the role of abstract ideologies has declined at the global level in the post-Cold War era. The West’s efforts to project the New World Order and globalisation that emphasised connectivity based on free trade and privatisation against the backdrop of liberal democracy could not attract much support in the Muslim world. The so-called Arab Spring brought down some dictatorships but no credible political and social alternative was evolved. In this situation of intellectual void, many political groups in Muslim countries sought salvation by adopting religion as their political ideology.
Different militant and non-militant groups are engaged in three-types of struggles. First, they are fighting against the West in order to push back its cultural and political impact on society. This struggle becomes more serious if the West, especially the US, is viewed by them as a supporter of their adversary group or the state where these groups are engaged in religious and political struggle. Second, they often challenge the writ of the state in order to paralyse it and take its control to impose their preferred religious order. If that is not possible, they want to create a territorial enclave for themselves. Third, these groups also compete with each other. Each militant group claims itself to represent the ‘genuine’ interpretation of religion and wants to destroy any group that does not subscribe to its view. These militant groups also fight with each other for controlling territory and material resources.
These struggles have increased divisions in the society. The state is either under siege by these groups or fighting these groups. This has reduced the capacity of the state to fulfill its obligations towards its citizens because continuous strife has adversely affected the economy, and law and order. These internally divided states also become vulnerable to external intervention by Western states and other Muslim states that have some political interests in and around these states.
These states are finding it difficult to maintain internal cohesion, sustain a stable governance system and ensure equitable economic growth. The ruling circles lack new ideas to sustain the voluntary loyalty of the people and the groups challenging them have no clear vision of the future of the state and society in the 21st century. These problems are not expected to be resolved in the near future. Published in The Express Tribune, February 10th, 2014.
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@genesis. Muslims of the Indian Sub-Continent still do not wish to believe their forefathers were Hindu's. They think and wish others to think that are from Arab descent. That is why there is this great schism within the Sub-Continent. Muslims wish to think that there religion is superior, but the Hindu's know that there religion is many many thousands of years older.
@Bakhtiyar Ghazi Khan: This is a new view of Muslims being occupied.For thousands of years it was the Muslim who were occupying and conquering in the name of religion and holy wars.Now that tide is being reversed ..If one reads History carefully it will be apparent that it was the British who put an end to Muslim rule in many parts of the world.At another level it is also a fact that in their zeal for conversion Islam was stopped in India, china,Japan and other South East Asian nations.These were ancient civilizations as they still are and based on strong roots and they could neutralize the zeal.
How can you expect peace and stability when you bet on the wrong horses - especially by following marauders and savages (Mahmud bin Qasim, Mahmud Ghazni, Ghori, Abdali) as your heroes and adopting their toxic ideology.
The mind set in many Islamic countries is 1400 years old. As mentioned in the article above, societies are still tribal based, as is the existing situation in many parts of Pakistan. The phenomenon of Nation State is a new concept in many Islamic countries. The people have still not reconciled their allegiance to this new "Nation State", their allegiances are still where they belonged prior to where it was before the creation of nation states.. Therefore areas such as Baluchistan, North and South Waziristan, many remote areas are still bound by cultures, values, allegiances prior to independence. Islamic nations have not been able to move with the times in education, human resource development, nation building, consciousness raising. Their values are being defined by Mullah's most of whom have their values being defined by other Mullah's when they were young. There is no questioning, no research, no broad based education, it is rote and the rod that is the basic staple in many Islamic societies. That is why, many Islamic countries are in dire straits. They cannot reconcile modernity with their values, what they have been taught. So that is where we really are.
@Rex Minor: " ... Pakistan has been operating in the vacuum after independence and still practices the laws which the Brits introduced as an occupation force. ... "
That is what we Hindus keep saying. A lot of people in the sub-continent still practice the laws and traditions introduced by Muslim and Christian occupation forces.
@numbersnumbers:
Wikipedia is not the source of knowledge, nor are the Americans responsible for orchestrating "the whole thing" as you call it. The American role is limited to destabilisation to facilitate a regime change, not only in the Arab lands as you call it but have been extended to Europe. Ukraine is the latest target.
Rex Minor
@DR GHULAM ASHRAF:
Well said, though strictly speaking any one who calls himself a muslim cannot be a secular at the same time. Most western democracies constitutions are based on and reflect the values of the scriptures. Their governments, however, today are secular thereby separating their functions from those of the Church, each operating independent of the other. The form of secular Government was first introduced by Hitler and Mussolini who negotiated a concord with the Vatican which is still in force. Pakistan has been operating in the vacuum after independence and still practices the laws which the Brits introduced as an occupation force.
Rex Minor
2nd attempt.
@Zalmai:
You too criticising the Pakistanis and feeding inferiority complex, the people who have experienced centuries of colonisation and are now being peperred by their Indian neighbours and the intellectuals of the writer of the article calibre, who in my quick read has not mentioned once the role of the current American administration who has been engaged in destabilising the muslim countries.. The mission is to destabilise all muslim States to invoke regime change through military or opposition groups; One billion dollars was the sum which the American President publicly admitted to have spent without Boots on ground to remove Colonel Gaddafi Government in Libya; the start of the spring revolution in Tunisia followed by the Egyptians and supported by the Turkish Governmet publicly could not withstand the opposition from the regressive military power in Egypt. The Aufklarung of Islam must wait as it has during the past centuries of colonisation, but no one should underestimate the power of the citizenry which started the peaceful spring revolution in Tunisia by offering the human torch to regain freedom with dignity.
Rex Minor
Observer, the software actually has a very recent virus in it.
Excellent Article, So if we exclude religion from running state affairs and society and limit it to someone's own faith then every thing will run fine and countries would progress.
Keep on comparing Pakistan with Arabs, Africans, Iranians etc but please do keep in mind, that imitating irrational alien beliefs has lead the people of this subcontinent in a destructive self-deception, a social chaos and anarchy.
Another point missed out is the problem of minorities in all these Islamic countries who are harassed and hounded.
No doubt governance within developing countries incl Muslim ones is poor. The majority of states within Muslim nations are controlled by secular governments (e.g. PPP, PML, TI, MQM, etc) who are trying to implement foreign political and economic models within Muslim heritage nations, and that too badly. I would argue we are in a mess because of adopting secular models within Muslim societies and then trying to disguise this as modernisation and pitting a false ideological battle against some rural based mullas (portrayed as backward etc), hence arguing falsely that to become more modern and successful (i.e. secular) we need to ditch Islamic models of governance (which have not been implemented anywhere in the Muslim nations since independence). It is unfortunate that the media is willing to give acres of space to any so-called intellectual who argues for secularism equals modernisation and success, when in reality that Pakistan has only been governed by secularists since independence and they alone are responsible fully for their political and economic demise, and the media do a intellectual disservice to Islamic models of governance by attacking them through rural based mullahs who have little idea knowledge/awareness of societal governance. Why are our media outlets not accounting the secularist politicians who ruin our countries and have messed them due to these philosophies and ideologies they have falsely adopted, rather than reviving their own heritage and intellectual roots. We need to be equitable in our analysis and fair minded.
Excellent Article, I think the main reason is the lust of power and wealth in muslim Rulers they are interested only in expanding their own business and wealth rather than devising a strategy for the welfare of ordinary people.
@Zalmai, Arabs had spring, Pakistan has nukes, both are oasises, or is it a mirage !!!
what is the thing that is common in the Muslim states? The software of Islam. Do they need an upgrade?
At least the Arabs have a spring, Pakistan is mired in a perpetual winter of discontent.
Why Pakistan is excluded from the list?
"A number of Muslim states are facing varying degrees of insurgencies and violent attacks against state institutions, officials and ordinary people. The leading examples are Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and Somalia." I lost interest in this article after the first few lines quoted above. How could he miss out Pakistan ?
Well expounded. Muslims do not know how they want to organize themselves collectively.
what needs to happen in Pakistan is a referendum on whether pakistani think religion should be decoupled from the state and whether religious parties should be banned from politics, like in Bangladesh. If the majority declares in affirmative, then this country can improve in a very short time and become independent finally. However, if the answer is no then this country will die because of religion, just like it was created for an unnecessary reason it will die for an unnecessary reason. However, at least then no one can say that it died only due to a vocal minority of people as others would have preferred a separation of religion from govt.