Im Guardian ist William Dalrymple der Meinung, dass die Neocon-Politik der pro-Demokratie-Intervention im Nahen Osten den politischen Islamismus erst so richtig in den Sattel gehoben hat.
William Dalrymple
Mir ist diese Sicht der Dinge schmerzlich, weil auch ich mir viel von den Interventionen versprochen habe. Aber ich finde, Dalrymples Analyse ist schwer von der Hand zu weisen. Kernzitate:
Democracy is not the antidote to the Islamists the neocons once fondly believed it would be. Since the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been a consistent response from voters wherever Muslims have had the right to vote. In Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey and Algeria they have voted en masse for religious parties in a way they have never done before. Where governments have been most closely linked to the US, political Islam’s rise has been most marked.
Noch eine wichtige Pointe Dalrymples, die auch die Debatten hier betrifft: Die Rede vom „Islamofaschismus“, der die islamische Welt bedroht, hat auch die Funktion, die Probleme auf eine intrinsische Krise der islamischen Welt zurückzuführen (die es unabweisbar gibt), und den Einfluß der revolutionären westlichen Politik zu verschleiern:
Yet in concentrating on the violent jihadi fringe, we may have missed the main story. For if the imminent Islamist takeover of western Europe is a myth, the same cannot be said for the Islamic world. Clumsy and brutal US policies in the Middle East have generated revolutionary changes, radicalising even the most moderate opinion, with the result that the status quo in place since the 1950s has been broken.
Dalrymple buchstabiert dies an Ägypten und Pakistan durch, wo islamische Parteien signifikant dazugewinnen, seit wir in Afghanistan und Irak interveniert haben und seit wir zugleich die dubiosen Regime in der arabischen Welt demonstrativ als Alliierte im Kampf gegen den Terrorismus stützen.
Moreover, the religious parties tend to be seen by the poor, rightly or wrongly, as representing justice, integrity and equitable distribution of resources. Hence the strong showing, for example, of Hamas against the blatantly corrupt Fatah in the 2006 elections in Palestine. Equally, the dramatic rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon has not been because of a sudden fondness for sharia law, but because of the status of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, as the man who gave the Israelis a bloody nose, and who provides medical and social services for the people of South Lebanon, just as Hamas does in Gaza.
The usual US response has been to retreat from its push for democracy when the „wrong“ parties win. This was the case not just with the electoral victory of Hamas, but also in Egypt: since the Brothers‘ strong showing in the elections, the US has stopped pressing Mubarak to make democratic reforms, and many of the Brothers‘ leading activists and business backers, as well as Mubarak’s opponent in the presidential election, are in prison, all without a word of censure from Washington.
Mit dieser Politik, so Dalrymple, beschädigen wir uns selbst. Wir brauchen einen Dialog mit den politischen Islamisten.