Applying The Malaysian Formula To Iraq
Applying The Malaysian Formula To Iraq
Today’s Iraq faces two monumental problems: the increasingly violent insurgency and the deepening sectarian strife, both feeding on each other with great devastation. Iraq reminds me of Malaysia of the 1950s and 60s.
Malaysia then was wrecked by a vicious communists insurgency that among other things successfully ambushed and killed the highest-ranking British colonial officer in the country. As for inter-communal hostilities, the Malays and Chinese had just had a bout of mutual madness slaughtering each other in the political vacuum that followed the sudden Japanese surrender in World War II.
Yet today Malaysia is an independent nation free of colonial rule and with its ethnically diverse citizens living in relative harmony. As for the communist insurgency, its leader now living in neighboring Thailand recently petitioned a Malaysian for the right of return. Imagine a former bandit court now having faith in the court system!
Malaysia’s success was remarkable considering that communism had then successfully penetrated the region. In Vietnam, America did not prevail despite having superior forces and considerably more resources.
While then Defense Secretary McNamara was obsessed with “body counts” as a measure of the war’s progress, Malaysian commanders were making every effort to ensure that their troops were not being senselessly killed in ambushes or civilians needlessly caught in the crossfire.
Malaysian leaders intuitively knew that for every innocent victim killed or maimed, the whole family, clan and village would then become the enemy. For every hamlet “destroyed in order to save it,” you would have created an entirely new set of committed foes. The body count would then become not a measure of progress but perversely, the exact opposite; a figure not to be celebrated but condemned.
More sinister would be the temptation to inflate such figures. If our troops could be killed in “friendly fire,” how much easier it would be to have the innocents get caught in the crossfire and then be labeled “insurgents.”
The Malaysian “Emergency” was even worse, with Communist China supporting it. It took the genius of the Malaysian leader at the time, the late Tun Razak, not to treat China as a potential enemy but an ally. That was a bold step at the height of the Cold War, and long before Nixon saw the wisdom of engaging China.
Ignoring the prevailing wisdom, Tun Razak bravely visited China seeking its leaders’ assurance not to support the insurgency in return for Malaysia recognizing China and initiating diplomatic and trade relations.
Without China’s support, and with Malaysians increasingly fed up with the violence, the insurgency rapidly collapsed. By not treating China as a potential enemy, it did not become the enemy. As for trade, China is today Malaysia’s major trading partner.
When I read on the increasing number of insurgents killed in Iraq, I am far from being assured, haunted by the curse of the old “body count.” Imagine such news being broadcasted in the Arab world, with images of Abu Ghairab as the prop.
Those Islamic terrorists are terrorists first, and Muslims second; they are a threat to all peace-loving people, Muslims and non-Muslims. Defeating them would require the effort and cooperation of all. That will not happen until we, the West and the Muslim world, recognize this commonality of purpose.
Today there is widespread misperception in the Muslim world that America’s war on terror is nothing more than a barely concealed assault on Islam itself, the old Crusade resurrected. There is an equally dangerous misperception in the West that the values and norms of these radicals represent mainstream Islam.
If great wars have been precipitated by misunderstandings of much lesser magnitude, imagine the dangers posed by such monumental misconceptions.
It is just as baffling to the average Westerner that Osama bin Ladin and his ilk remain popular in Pakistan as it is for the Muslim villager to comprehend why the Pat Robertsons command such respect in the White House. Granted, the evil deeds perpetrated by Osama are in no way comparable to the gaffe of a Pat Robertson, nonetheless the underlying assumptions and mindset differ only in degree, not kind.
When America denies visas to respected Muslims like Tariq Ramadan and Yusuf Islam, it is implicitly treating them, and by inference their followers, as potential enemies. The slope from potential to real enemy is made steeper with each incident.
America’s war on terror assumes that once a terrorist, always a terrorist, or that the only good terrorist is a dead one, a residuum of the Cold War mentality. The Malaysian approach was the exact opposite. It saw immense propaganda value of a captured or surrendered terrorist repenting.
The world too has seen many a terrorist subsequently becoming statesmen, with a few even winning the Nobel Peace Prize! Those we regard as terrorists today were once our heroes. We embraced them as freedom fighters in White House ceremonies when the objects of their terror were the Soviets.
America needs the Muslim world to successfully execute the war on terror. Likewise, the Muslim world needs American help in ridding the extremists within its midst. This common objective would best be achieved with America and the Islamic world not treating each other as potential enemies.