Finding allies, and defining victory
By Christopher Heffelfinger
I have spent the past few days getting to know Cairo. Of course a few days isn't enough to really crack the surface, but the surface is very telling in its own regard. There are very clearly two Cairos. One of grandeur and wealth beyond that of most of the developed world. One of extreme poverty and dire need, and not much to show of a middle class.
This is no hotbed of Islamist activity; what exists of that scene is well underground, and I believe largely outside of the capital. There is no public dialogue on political Islam, but neither is there much political debate in the larger sense. The question that strikes me is: in a country where so much of the population is in favor of democracy, development and progress, what efforts are we making to secure allies here in the long term? The jihadi movement is predicated on the popular support of Muslims worldwide, and it aims not simply to defeat the United States, but to awaken Muslims to its calling and reorient the umma on an Islamicized trajectory. This is the bigger war, not simply defeating combatants in a given battlefield or uncovering cells set on attacks.
Clearly, if we say bin Laden is the primary enemy in this war, and he has command and control capabilities, our military efforts should correspond to that assessment. But they do not. Instead, we are fighting freshly created militants in a separate arena. (This is a distrationary tactic--or managed chaos, idarat al-tawahhush--as my friends who served in Special Forces in Latin America and Vietnam consistently remind me.)
Before the next elections, should we not, as a country, redefine victory -- and redefine the war and its objectives as well? I read a statement from President Bush in the (Saudi owned) pan-Arab daily al-Hayat two days ago proclaiming that ''Saudi Arabia is a principal ally in the war on terror''. Look at the records of the Muslim World League and its subsidiaries, like the IIRO and al-Haramain, which are organs of the Saudi state. Does their record appear to be that of an an ally? Or perhaps there are, as in ths city, two sides to Saudi.