Arabs wake up to spectre of Islamist terrorism

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (BAHRAIN), FEB. 2. Interior Ministers from Arab countries met in Algiers recently to discuss the phenomenon of terrorism and the ways to combat it. In Turkey, the police have been unearthing almost on a daily basis, bodies of dozens abducted and killed by a fundamentalist party. Such acts once again reveal how the Muslim majority countries of West Asia and North Africa have had to contend with fundamentalist terrorism just as much as societies where other faiths predominate.

Turkey has recently been witness to a spate of bizarre incidents. They started with a shootout in Istanbul last month in the which the security forces killed the leader of a fundamentalist party, the Hizbollah and captured two of his key associates.

The interrogation that followed led to raids on several hideouts where the authorities discovered the bodies of men and women, who had been missing for long periods after their apparent abduction. Similar raids in the south-east of the country too revealed more bodies. So far, over 40 bodies have been found, most bearing marks of torture and the number is expected to rise.

Most of the victims were rich and presumably held for ransom to raise funds for the Hizbollah. Some of the women victims have been identified as advocates of women's rights and they were probably killed for their beliefs.

Most of the victims are of Kurdish origin and at least some of the deaths may be connected to the rivalry between secular Kurdish nationalists owing allegiance to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Hizbollah.

The mainstream Islamist party, Fazelet or Virtue Party (successor to Refah or Welfare), voiced a suspicion apparently shared by others in the country. Asking for a thorough investigation into the affair, Fazelet hinted that the Hizbollah had got away with murder and for so long because the Turkish military had needed the help of the fundamentalists to fight the PKK. The implication was that the Turkish military had overlooked the Hizbollah's excesses because it was also fighting the PKK. The 16-year long struggle between the Turkish military and the PKK has been savage.

The President, Mr. Suleyman Demirel, the Prime Minister, Mr. Bulent Ecevit and the army leadership have reacted strongly to Fazelet's charges. They pointed out that it was Fazelet's mix of a strong religious content with the political discourse that had created the atmosphere in which forces like Hizbollah thrived. Both Fazelet and the Hizbollah, they pointed out, wanted to replace Turkey's secular system with an Islamic agenda.

The Turkish establishment has, of course, been forthright in its opposition to confessional politics. Whereas others might be prepared to tolerate religion-centred political forces, the Turkish formulation is that politics of this nature would inevitably manifest itself in violence.

As an aside it should be mentioned that it is not merely Islam- based political forces of West Asia that manifest this almost natural tendency to slip into a violent mode.

For some years now, the Arab Interior Ministers, at their annual conferences, have been seized with the issue of fundamentalist violence and its nexus with the drug trade. There has been increasing co-operation among them and talk of even holding a summit on this issue.

The ruling establishment in virtually every Arab country has an authoritarian streak but are, by and large, secular though many have taken on religious trappings over the last decade. However, these regimes know that if public grievances find an outlet in religious millenarian movements, they become difficult to control.

It is not just the mayhem that these forces can unleash that makes them dangerous. Such forces also block the changes that are necessary if West Asian societies are to cope with modern times. In Morocco, the Government recently decided to introduce measures to improve the education of women and in Egypt, the Government widened women's rights to seek divorce by a modest degree. Both measures have attracted the ire of fundamentalist parties. West Asian regimes will suffer first and suffer the most if fundamentalist terrorism gets a grip on their societies. All those involved in the global war against fundamentalist terrorism would do well to remember that the ruling establishments of West Asia and North Africa are not just natural allies but are actually at the cutting edge of the struggle against this phenomenon.

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Section  : International
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