Moderation, just like extremism, is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. Last month, the British and US governments suspended deliveries of “non-lethal aid” — vehicles, communication devices, intelligence assistance — to its preferred group of moderate Syrian rebels, the Free Syrian Army (FSA). That was because the FSA was as dead as a dodo and western aid had been confiscated by a newer coalition of rebel groups called the Islamist Front.
This month, the same Islamist Front, together with Syria’s home-grown Al Qaida affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra — and with the presumed acquiescence or encouragement of Turkey and other Nato countries — helpfully led attacks on the most ruthless Al Qaida group in northern Syria — the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS). At least 50 ISIS members, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, were summarily executed; some of their families have been kidnapped and brutalised. Meet the new moderates.
The West’s confused approach to Syria is simply the internationalisation of a familiar problem — the West’s definition of extremism and how to beat it. One result of the London terror attacks in 2005 was a mushrooming of well-meaning, generously-endowed initiatives designed to combat extremism. Most went beyond traditional anti-terror techniques to focus on the alleged causes of terrorism and how to rescue young men on the pathway to radicalisation. The point was to tip, nudge and channel young men at risk of indoctrination towards more benign alternatives. Then there were all those attempts to “turn” Islamist militants or activists from the British far-right street protest movement, the English Defence League (EDL). Occasionally came news of a coup — after delicate negotiations, a firebrand had jumped ship, leading to a new career in anti-extremism and a round of media congratulation. But just how helpful is it to label the average EDL supporter or conservative Muslim as a dangerous extremist?
To put it another way: Do we have a problem with specific acts of violence or intimidation or with radicalisation per se? If our problem is radicalisation itself, we are in serious trouble. No liberal, democratic state should be in the business of steering people away from radical or fundamentalist beliefs — as long as their plans do not congeal into plans to perpetrate terrorism.
Then there is the question of strategy. Attempts to counter Islamist extremism often take the form of puffing up the importance of allegedly moderate counterweights, whose leaders may be corrupt or not representative of anyone but themselves. The United Kingdom government’s much-criticised preventing violent extremism strategy spent large sums of public money footing the bill for tours by peaceable-sounding Islamic scholars. This was grossly patronising to believers: It is not up to us to tell Muslims how to be Muslim. Neither was it clear what the money was supposed to achieve. A friend of mine who teaches in an inner-city London school scored £5,000 (Dh30,202) from the Prevent programme — a British government strategy to prevent violent extremism, because it was there for the taking: With no idea how to spend it, she made a comic documentary about jihad.
If this kind of woolly subsidy existed anywhere else in the public sector, it would have been hammered with endless demands for evidence-based assessment of its output — because there is little or no evidence it works. No matter: Institutional anti-extremism is better dug in than ever, an intellectual gravy train of research centres and thinktanks. But ill-conceived anti-extremism initiatives are not only expensive window-dressing. By dividing the world into goodies and baddies, their effect is to make our preferred moderates look like lackeys or spies, which only fuels resentment and an extremist backlash. Prevent, for example, was hampered by the widespread belief that it was a front for intelligence gathering. The fundamental flaw with technocratic, managerial anti-extremism lies in its misunderstanding of cause and effect — it is dissatisfaction with a shallow, compromised, inauthentic middle ground that itself gives rise to extremism at the margins. By throwing our weight behind handpicked moderates, we are only fanning the flames of further extremism.
The folly of the West’s approach to Syria’s rebellion stems from the same root. It confuses the West’s professed mission in the region — to bring freedom and democracy to Syrians — with its grim determination to use proxies to advance its interests. The West’s new friends in the Islamic Front are mostly conservative Salafists. There is nothing wrong with that and they are far from international terrorists: Last spring, I spent time with one of their battalions in Aleppo and they protected me with their lives. On the other hand, they are not averse to a little torture and some of them seethe with hatred of Syria’s minorities.
Wisely, they claim to be their own men, but their brigades will not be able to do without foreign support — and the ISIS extremists are already making headway by claiming that their attackers are hostage to shady foreign interests. Despite the initial euphoria among Syrian activists and their international allies, the outcome of these punishing battles in northern Syria between the West’s ‘goodies’ and the extremist ‘baddies’ is deeply uncertain — and may soon backfire.
Modern Islamist terrorism thrives on chaos and vacuum, but often burns itself out quickly if left alone — few young men want to live the life of a medieval puritan for very long. The best way to beat it is to change the subject — to treat people as free citizens susceptible to a political argument and not as members of sectional ethnic or sectarian groups whose allegiances are easily bought. By intervening in a panicky way to find allies and claims to representation, institutional anti-extremism tends to aggravate the very problem it sets itself to solve. At this rate of attrition, the West’s next Syrian allies are likely to be the Al Qaida groups that do not want to pick a fight with Britain and the US — whose only quarrel is with the West’s extremist enemies over there.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
James Harkin is the author of War Against All: The Struggle for Northern Syria.
