Which Islam? Reformers need the military

by Stanley A. Weiss

LONDON --As Secretary of State Colin Powell recognized last week when unveiling a new U.S. initiative to promote democracy and prosperity in the Middle East, the great battle today is not a clash of civilizations between Muslims and non-Muslims. It is a clash within a civilization - within Islam.

A victory for the Reformers, 21st century secularists who favor separation of mosque and state, will mean a long-overdue Islamic Reformation and more moderate Muslim democracies-in-training like Turkey and Indonesia. A victory for the Reactionaries, 7th century theocrats like Osama bin Laden, will mean more Islamic back-to-the-Dark-Ages dictatorships and more jihad against the United States and its "infidel" allies.

Who will win this struggle for the soul of Islam? Recent events in three strategic Muslim nations - Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia - suggest one crucial factor that Secretary Powell missed: the militaries of these countries and the generals who lead them.

Each of these countries lives under the guiding legacy of an omnipresent founding father. Turkey's Kemal Ataturk, Pakistan's Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Indonesia's Sukarno all envisioned secular states that would overcome their nations' ethnic, cultural and religious animosities. And each of these nations might be an Islamic theocracy today without a military to defend this secular tradition.

The Turkish armed forces have intervened four times since 1960, "fine-tuning democracy" with so-called "corrective" coups, most recently ousting the nation's first Islamist prime minister in 1997.

Pakistan has spent more than half of its 55-year history under military rule. Perves Musharraf seized power in 1999 in part to reverse the nation's descent into theocracy.

For half a century until the 1998 downfall of President Suharto, the Indonesian military stamped out Islamists whenever they threatened the secular nationalist government.

Turks, Pakistanis and Indonesians recognize that a strong hand is at times the only way to prevent their politically and ethnically fractured countries from slipping into the chaos, poverty and despair upon which fundamentalists feed.

Yet it is a love-hate relationship. The same militaries that are cheered as the solution to what ails these struggling countries are then jeered at as the problem. The trick is getting the army back to the barracks.

Western nightmares (militant Islamists seizing power, and nuclear weapons in Pakistan) should not give military-backed regimes free reign to suppress legitimate dissent or stymie democratic and economic reform. Inept, corrupt or repressive regimes, whether secular or Islamist, only fuel their own opposition.

Witness the historic gains of Islamic or Islamic-rooted parties in recent elections in Pakistan and Turkey. Witness the ongoing student protests in Iran, where a recent poll showed that 75 percent of Iranians favor restoring ties with the Great Satan.

Nor will muscle alone ensure the triumph of secularists. The shah's American-armed military and intelligence service proved powerless against a generation of Iranians demanding an end to his secular dictatorship. Likewise, the ayatollah's militia thugs will ultimately prove powerless against today's generation of Iranians demanding an end to the Islamic dictatorship.

There also is the danger of militaries dancing with the devil, advancing their own political and business interests by collaborating with radical Islamic groups. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is widely believed to have helped engineer the unholy alliance of pro-Taliban, pro-Al Qaeda Islamic radicals that now controls two provinces and half the seats in the Pakistani Senate.

It's the Islamic Catch-22. Fledging Muslim democracies risk empowering anti-democratic radicals unlikely to cede power once they have it. Iron- fisted dictatorships risk radicalizing moderates.

But history can be a guide as developing nations try to strike the delicate balance and avoid a repeat of the aborted Algerian elections of 1991 that almost put in power Islamic extremists and, when the military intervened, plunged the nation into civil war.

The seed of democracy and prosperity was planted in authoritarian Greece, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand and in many countries in Latin America by building market-based economies. Political stability (provided by militaries) helped to attract investment, and capitalism eventually produced the reformers' best friend - a prosperous middle class that rejected extremism and demanded more political freedom. Consider Algeria today: with the radicals largely defeated, the secular government is inaugurating political and economic reforms unthinkable under an Islamic state.

In an ideal world, there would be no place in politics for meddling military hands. In the real world, disciplined armed forces are an essential ingredient for moderate Muslim nations. The West can have it both ways, supporting strategic partners and promoting human rights, by training and improving secular Muslim militaries that keep religion out of politics.

Millions of dollars in U.S. economic and political assistance is a start. But without these generals, today's Muslim reformers don't stand a chance against the intimidation and violence of militant fundamentalists. The future of Islam will then belong to the reactionaries, and then the real clash of civilizations will begin.

The writer is founder and chairman of Business Executives for National Security. The views he expresses are his own.