Mobilising the Muslim world

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 22. As part of its important effort to mobilise the Muslim world against the Taliban and take religion out of the political equations in the current war, the United States is reaching out to the Islamic Republic of Iran through Great Britain.

In proclaiming `jehad' against the U.S., the Taliban hopes to weaken the international coalition that Washington is trying to put together. The militia expects that the deep resentment against the West in much of the Islamic world would undermine the regimes that support America and its war plans.

The American attempt to prevent the religious divide from casting a shadow over the war appears to have three distinct elements. First, to get various moderate Islamic establishments across the world to reject terrorism and draw them into the war against extremism.

The second element involves the consideration of a strategy that avoids a disproportionate American military response, discarding the temptation to bomb Afghanistan to cinders, and narrowly focusing the retaliatory attacks on Osama bin Laden and his terrorist networks in Afghanistan.

But the immediate American objective is to draw as many Islamic nations as possible into the international coalition against terrorism. The Bush administration has already lined up many of its friends and allies in the Muslim world behind the coalition.

Support, reluctant or otherwise, from moderate Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf kingdoms has been along expected lines. Many of these nations face direct security threats from extremist tendencies and have no objections to a war against terrorism. But they have to worry about inflaming the Arab street that has already become so hostile to the U.S.

Looking beyond traditional support bases, the Bush administration appears to have initiated wary overtures to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The British Foreign Secretary, Mr. Jack Straw, is heading for Teheran, obviously on behalf of the U.S., to build on the positive signals from Teheran since September 11.

Following the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran has been militantly anti-American. The Islamic Republic had denounced the U.S. as the `Great Satan'; Death to America has been a steady chant in Iran during Friday prayers for more than two decades. But from the day death rained on New York last week, the slogan was discarded amidst unexpected Iranian expression of sympathy for the American victims of terrorism. Iranian support to the international coalition would be very valuable. Iran has considerable ideological influence among Muslim opinion worldwide.

Sharing a long border with Afghanistan, Iran has an important role in ensuring the defeat of the militia and in structuring new political arrangements in Kabul.

Iran has had tense relations with the Taliban since it came to power five years ago and, in 1998, the two sides nearly went to war. Iran had dubbed the ideological formulations of the Taliban as a `vulgarisation' of Islam.

Iran, with its dominant Shia faith, is deeply disturbed by the militia's oppression of Shia and Persian- speaking minorities in Afghanistan. Teheran was also offended by the efforts of the Taliban and Pakistan to cut Iran out of the geo-politics of transporting the rich natural gas resources of Central Asia to the rest of the world.

The convergence of American and Iranian interests in Afghanistan is indeed real. But the efforts for a modus vivendi in recent years has not succeeded in the face of many obstacles. Iran is also deeply divided between reformers and conservatives.

The U.S. sees Iran as a spoiler in the peace process in West Asia and accuses it of supporting terrorism in the region. Iran has been ideologically opposed to U.S. military presence in the region, and might want to carefully assess how the American intervention this time will affect its own interests over the long-term.

There is no question that there will be some very hard bargaining between Iran and the U.S.-led coalition. But at least it has begun. India, which has drawn closer to Iran in recent years and coordinated its Afghan policy with Iran, should be happy to see Teheran join the international coalition against terrorism.

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