By Tsvi Bisk. The Challenge of Oil and So-Called Moderate Arab States
Tsvi Bisk
The dirty little (well-known) ‘secret’ of the War on Islamism is that Saudi petrodollars have been financing “poisonous Islamist extremism” world over. Saudi Arabia is the home of the most extreme and intolerant denomination of Islam – the Wahhabis (the theological fountainhead of modern Islamism). Because of this, and despite its being granted the title of ‘moderate’, the two-faced Saudi state is a bigger enemy than Iran and ISIS combined in the “War on Islamism”. In point of fact ISIS and other Salafist groups around the world are largely financed by Saudi petrodollars, as are the domestic Islamists described above, as was Osama Ben Laden and the perpetrators of 9/11.
In May 28, 2013, Vancouver Sun columnist Jonathan Manthorpe noted that the Saudi royal family, by way of government aid and contributions by individual princes, donates huge amounts to Wahhabi institutions and organizations. This includes financing 210 Islamic centers, 1,500 mosques, 202 colleges and 2,000 religious schools (madrases) as well as $3 billion a year on missionary activity. He goes on to write that “Indian newspapers recently reported Saudi Arabia has a massive $35 billion program to build mosques and religious schools across South Asia, where there are major Muslim communities in India…”
This money overwhelms moderate Muslim leaders and poisons every Muslim community in the world. A good analogy would be to imagine the impact on world Christendom if the Westboro Baptist Church, which burns Korans and pickets funerals of American soldiers to protest tolerance of homosexuals, had the petrodollars of Saudi Arabia (and Qatar) and used this financial power to spread its disgusting doctrines. What would Christianity look like if that was the case?
It’s not as if the West did not know these facts. As Manthrope note: “In 2003, a United States Senate committee on terrorism heard testimony that in the previous 20 years Saudi Arabia had spent $87 billion on promoting Wahhabism worldwide…curbing direct payments to terrorist groups is a small matter when so many billions of dollars continue to be directed at creating terrorists.” The thirst for oil encourages the West to avert its eyes from this self-evident reality.
Qatar has become Saudi Arabia’s junior partner in financing Wahhabi Islam in Europe according to Soeren Kern in a February 9, 2012 article on the website of the Gatestone Institute. He called Qatar the most fraudulent ‘moderate’ Arab state.
The Qataris are “investing” $65 million to spread Wahhabi doctrine amongst the hundreds of thousands of discontented Muslim immigrants living in Parisian suburbs. The Qatari Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, poses as a pro-Western reformist and modernizer but is really a major supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. He has sworn to spread fundamentalist Wahhabi teachings across “the whole world”. This would discourage Muslim integration into the modern world and in practice encourage jihad against non-Muslims. Qatari and Saudi petrodollars are one of the main reasons that Sharia law is displacing French civil law in many parts of France (the Zones Urbaines Sensibles). The Sharia law ‘no-go’ zones of France are being financed by the French themselves – by buying Qatari gas and Saudi oil.
Other countries of Europe are also financing their own Islamist subversion by transferring huge amounts of money to the petro-fascists. In Italy, for instance, 60% of Mosques are controlled by the Wahhabi influenced and Qatari financed Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar is also financing a mega-mosque in Cork Ireland. Islam is the fastest growing religion in Ireland – having grown tenfold in the past 20 years. The Muslim Brotherhood is the dominant influence amongst Muslims in Ireland.
Eliminating Petrodollar Power
The elimination of Petrodollar Power must, therefore, become a priority in the “War on Islamism”. Fortunately, oil has now become a double edged sword. It can be wielded against the oil producing states as much as wielded by them. Iran is a good example of what could have been done in this regard. It could not have financed its nuclear program without the revenues of 2.5 million barrels of oil exports a day up until 2011. Exports were reduced to 1.1 million barrels a day by 2013 because of western sanctions. This significantly reduced the development inertia of their program. China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey are now the largest customers of the remaining 1.1 million barrels a day. Four of these five could have been easily pressured in forgoing their imports from Iran in return for equivalent amounts from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA and its constituent members have over four billion barrels of oil in strategic reserves. The USA, Japan and EU countries have almost two billion barrels of these strategic reserves and could have comfortably released a million barrels a day for well over two years, thus completely crippling the Iranian economy and hobbling their nuclear development even further.
Emasculating the economic power of Iran would have weakened Syrian militancy and starved Hamas and Hezbollah. Syria would have become even more amenable to a politically doable peace deal with Israel, while weakening Hamas would have strengthened the Palestinian Authority and reassured Israel, enabling both to enter into serious negotiations towards a two-state solution. The question is do these strategic reserves exist solely to ameliorate an oil supply interruption or should they also be available for use to disrupt much greater potential threats to the long term security of the West?
The big challenge of course is Saudi Arabia, which could not spend billions of dollars a year financing a Wahhabi educational system throughout the Moslem world if it did not have the revenues of eight million barrels of oil a day. What steps will the West take to liberate itself from Persian Gulf oil? What will characterize the West under the leadership of the United States – self-indulgence, or self discipline and self-reliance? Does the West have the will to do what needs to be done or does it continue to obsequiously grovel before oil blackmail and the Jihadist terror that petrodollars finance? Can the west formulate a grand strategy to rid itself of Jihadist oil?
Complete energy independence from Muslim countries would enable the west to withdraw from positions which are one of the greatest inciters to Islamism – their very presence in Muslim countries (especially military presence)
The Special Case of Egypt
America’s present attitude towards Egyptian president el-Sisi is dangerously wrong; it is devoid of historical context. El-Sisi is an Egyptian nationalist, not a pan-Arabist or a pan-Islamist. In his election speeches he persistently returned to themes like: “I promise you nothing – except to work day and night to raise Egypt out of its present ruin. To do this I need western investment and regional cooperation”. In other words to serve Egypt he needs national stability not the pan-Arab or Islamist adventurism of Nasser or Morsi.
Modern Egyptian history provides background to el-Sisi’s atittiude. Muhammad Naguib was the first President of modern Egypt. When in 1954 the Muslim Brotherhood tried to assassinate Nasser (then deputy Prime Minister) he arrested Naguib and jailed the Brotherhood. Naguib and Nasser had come to power in a coup in 1952. So in the first two years of modern Egypt we have two coups, one attempted assassination by the Muslim Brotherhood, a brutal crackdown on the Brotherhood and a ruthless violation of due process. Sounds like the last two years of Egyptian history.
Nasser’s pan-Arabist adventurism in Yemen and Palestine resulted in 100,000 dead and 300,000 wounded Egyptian soldiers and decades of grinding poverty. In 1960 Egypt still had a higher per capita income than South Korea – today South Korea’s per capita income is ten times that of Egypt’s, despite Egypt’s numerous natural advantages over South Korea: its proximity to the EU, the Suez Canal, its mass tourism potential, its own natural resources as well its potential access to petro-dollars.
Sadat was sickened by the human and economic price Egypt had paid for its pan-Arabist ambitions. He was an Egyptian nationalist who, anticipating el-Sisi, also wanted western investments and regional stability and cooperation. He needed to renew Egyptian self esteem and remove Egypt from playing a major role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This explains both the Yom Kippur War (self esteem) and his peace initiative with Israel (regional stability and cooperation). Previously, in the desire to liberalize Egypt, he made the mistake of releasing masses of Islamists who had been jailed by Nasser. This turned out to be suicidal. One group – the Islamic Jihad – eventually assassinated him.
Mubarak made some significant domestic reforms in housing and other areas but survived six attempts on his life by Islamists. These attempts led him gradually to turn Egypt into a semi-police state which, along with his personal corruption, made him increasingly unpopular and led to his eventual overthrow by the street.
Morsi was a leader of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. He was elected democratically but immediately granted himself unlimited powers including the power to legislate without judicial oversight or review of his acts. He drafted an Islamist constitution which his opponents called an “Islamist coup”. He jailed journalists and his supporters attacked demonstrators. The liberal Egyptian politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed El-Baradei called Morsi a new pharaoh and supported el-Sisi’s coup. During Morsi’s short term in office, pogroms were conducted by Islamists against Coptic Christians and over 40 Coptic churches were burned to the ground; individuals of the small Shia minority were brutally murdered by Sunni Islamists and no coherent domestic policies were articulated. When a Muslim Brotherhood governmental official was asked by a foreign journalist how he intended to address Cairo’s horrendous traffic jams his response was “when Sharia law is instituted Allah will solve all our problems”. Tourism, Egypt’s biggest money maker and biggest employer had no future in a country ruled by such a mindset. Morsi’s Islamism promised to inflict even greater economic damage on Egypt than Nasser’s pan-Arabism
It was on the background of this history that el-Sisi came to power – undemocratically to be sure but with obvious mass popular support (including El-Baradei, the Coptic Pope and even some moderate Muslim Imams). El-Sisi’s burning hatred for the Muslim Brotherhood and its baby sister Hamas was palpable from the start. The Islamist assassination of Sadat and attempted Islamist assassinations of Nasser and Mubarak made his first order of business (and self-survival) the utter destruction by any means of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. It is this that explains the death sentence of 600 members of the Muslim Brotherhood. His message is clear – I am going to kill you before you can even try to kill me. His methods might not have endeared him to James Madison or John Adams, but then again Egypt is not Virginia or Massachusetts.
El-Sisi’s hatred has increased because Islamists from Libya and Hamas inspired Islamists in Sinai have been killing his soldiers. For him Hamas is just a provincial branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and thus an enemy of Egyptian national interests. This explains his indifference to Palestinian suffering in Gaza. Official Egyptian media, even more so than Israeli media, has consistently blamed Hamas for this suffering, not Israel.
America should embrace el-Sisi as a force for stability neutralizing the predictable instability of Islamism and pan-Arabism. El-Sisi’s rule is and will be cruel by western standards but will result in much less human suffering than that caused by pan-Arabism and Islamism. We should not let our devotion to the good prevent us from embracing the better. The choice here is not between Jeffersonian Democracy and Fascism; it is between a possible Egyptian Ataturk and Jihadi savagery. El-Sisi’s need for regional cooperation makes his commitment to the peace with Israel a vital part of his national agenda. The Obama administration should not condemn him for bombing Islamists in Libya who infiltrate Egypt and kill Egyptian citizens and soldiers. On the contrary, they should consider promoting the idea of a U.N. sponsored Egyptian mandate over Libya which is now to be considered a failed state and a breeding ground for Islamists, soon to become the Somalia of North Africa.
The Special Case of Turkey
This brings me to the special case of Turkish president Erdogan. Imagine if Italian or French Communists had succeeded in winning an election and were faced with implementing their Marxist ideology while managing the economic and cultural realty of an advanced capitalist country. Imagine that and you will understand Erdogan and why he appears moderate to the West, while at the same time he is openly calling for the reestablishment of the Ottoman Caliphate (which would include Egypt as well as Israel) and is siding with and supporting the most retrograde Islamists in the Arab world. He has had the difficult task of advancing his Islamic principles in perhaps the most western and secular society in the Muslim world. And, to his credit, he has been brilliant at walking this fine line without upsetting Turkey’s economy or the West.
An good example of his political skills and how he is playing the West while advancing his Islamist agenda have been his actions against the Turkish Army which have earned him the admiration of western liberals. He has successfully convinced the West and even many in the Turkish intelligentsia that he is simply reestablishing the constitutionalist principles of a western democracy. Technically this is certainly the case. Like most Middle Eastern armies, the Turkish army has had fascistic tendencies and has removed the democratically elected governments of Turkey several times by coup d’état. They are not and have never been a democratic institution in the western sense; but they have been a modernizing and secular institution in the Ataturk sense – preserving the secular character of the modern Turkish state at all costs. What Erdogan has really accomplished, therefore, is not the establishment of constitutionalism but the elimination of the most robust secular obstacle to his Islamist agenda.
When you understand the true character of this individual – his true ideological and theological motivations and agendas then what has appeared a mystery to the West suddenly becomes clear. His support for Hamas in Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, his ferocious antagonism to Israel and to el-Sisi, his domestic demagoguery against the Jews, his waffling on his NATO commitments and so on. Erdogan wears very fashionable western suits, appears in public with his attractive wife by his side (in a most non-Islamist way), supervises a rather successful economic policy (always looked on favorably by the Capitalist West) and in general presents Turkey as a potential ‘moderate’ and modernizing Islamist alternative to Iran. One must not underestimate his shrewd intelligence in these matters, but one should never forget that these are all tactics in the service of an overriding Islamist ideology.
Conclusion
The West must recognize the true enemy; it is the ideology of Islamism, not the tactic of terror. We must identify the real Islamists and not delude ourselves that there can be such a thing as a moderate Islamist. Thus we must reevaluate our relationships with Erdogan and with el-Sisi.
We must convene a Geneva Convention for Asymmetric Warfare and design international laws and conventions that create a legal and constitutionalist framework for the unique necessities of asymmetric warfare. This failed game of pretending we are dealing with criminals and not with enemies while at the same time conducting warfare against them must cease.
The West must adopt a comprehensive policy of zero tolerance for domestic Islamism right across the board; tolerating Islamism in one’s own country while pretending to combat it internationally is patently absurd. Worse than that – it is also self-defeating. The inertia of global Islamist triumphalism must be reversed and the starting point must be the domestic battlefield. Islamists and Islamism must be allowed no triumphs – domestic or international. “No-Go” Sharia Law zones in western countries must be completely eliminated. Veils covering faces must be outlawed. No Islamist entity should be given any aid or recognition whether directly or indirectly. Total war and unconditional surrender on the model of WWII policy to Germany and Japan must be our aim.
Two grand-strategic aims are fundamental to such a policy: the weakening of oil as a vital international commodity and the incremental empowerment of women in Muslim countries and communities. A comprehensive network of education and aid programs for Muslim women resident in western countries must be developed. A major first step would be to set up shelters for battered and abused Muslim women, or women who simply want to leave an oppressive social situation but have nowhere to go. Make Gender Apartheid a crime. On the international front, all western foreign aid should be funneled through women led and run NGOs. Empowering women is the greatest long term subversive threat to Islamism. Giving aid to male dominated governments not only leads to growing corruption, it reinforces the gender discrimination endemic to these societies and thus becomes an added fertilizer upon which the diseased plant of Islamism can grow. Giving scholarships to Muslim women to study in the West is another step that would have great positive impact.
The war against Islamism can be won, but it requires the elimination of self-deluding wishful thinking and the formulation of a coherent and comprehensive grand strategy. The history of the 20th century proves that when the West disenthralls itself from wishful thinking and develops a comprehensive grand strategy it can defeat Fascism, Nazism and Communism. In the 21st century it is destined to defeat Islamism.
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Tsvi Bisk is an American-Israeli futurist. He is the director of the Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking (www.futurist-thinking.co.il/) and contributing editor for strategic thinking for The Futurist magazine.
He is also the author of The Optimistic Jew: A Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century. Tsvi is available as a lecturer or as a scholar in residence as well as for strategic consulting
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Tsvi Bisk
