America's quest for foreign policy continues

Mushahid Hussain, Inter Press Service, Islamabad

U.S. foreign policy continues to be in a quandary, and not just because U.S. troops are bogged down in the two Muslim countries that they invaded and occupied after Sept. 11, 2001.

There is a yawning chasm between Washington's pronouncements and practices, as it gropes for a policy on how to deal with an increasingly agitated Muslim world and a more assertive international community, which includes once-docile Russia, European Union and the United Nations.

U.S. President George W Bush has categorically stated that "our war is not against the Muslim faith".

But the man the Pentagon tasked to "combat terrorism" in the Muslim world, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, is someone who has publicly ridiculed Islam and aired sentiments that border on anti-Muslim bigotry.

Bush also seemed perplexed after meeting with Indonesian Muslim leaders in Bali in October when he asked his aides: "Do they really believe that we think all Muslims are terrorists?"

Then there is also the Oct. 30 speech of Pentagon's Number Two and super-hawk Paul Wolfowitz at Georgetown University in Washington. Wolfowitz urged Muslims to "undermine extremists and boost the influence of moderates in the global war on terrorism", saying that the "Israeli Palestinian conflict was clearly one huge factor in our relations with the Muslim world".

On both counts -- strengthening Muslim "moderates" and Palestine -- what is the U.S.' track record?

Yasser Arafat is an elected and credible leader of Palestine, and a certainly a "moderate" by the standards of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

But the Bush administration has been mindlessly toeing the line of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in wanting to replace Arafat with somebody more pliable.

Iran's elected President Mohammad Khatami is another "moderate" whose government covertly cooperated with the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the U.S. response to these Iranian gestures has been to slot it as part of its "axis of evil".

U.S. obduracy was only made irrelevant thanks to the adroit diplomacy and statesmanship of the European Union's big three -- Britain, Germany and France -- that swung a deal with Iran on the nuclear issue and thus defused a potential crisis.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the most reliable partners of the U.S. government during and after the Cold War. It has played a long list of supportive roles in such situations as the Palestinian issue, oil politics, the Lebanese civil war, Afghanistan's "jihad", defusing Arab radicalism, even containing anti-U.S. sentiment in Nicaragua. But now it is being pilloried and treated more as a foe than a friend.

Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad,who stepped as prime minister last week, is the only Muslim leader to publicly condemn suicide bombings and is a consistent critic of the Muslim condition.

Yet he is reviled by the U.S. government because he said the unthinkable about Muslims perceptions about Jewish political power just before stepping down from office.

Pakistan remains under pressure although without Islamabad, the U.S. regional strategy post-Sept. 11 would have gone haywire in the region. Instead of defusing tensions in South Asia, Washington okayed the billion-dollar Israeli sale of its Phalcon radars to India.

Syria, which cooperated by providing intelligence to the U.S. government on al-Qaeda, has been penalized because of Israel, given the passage of the Syria Accountability Act in the U.S. Congress.

It is in this context of U.S. waffling in the Muslim world that a high-powered task force of two prominent U.S. institutions -- the Asia Society and the Council for Foreign Relations -- issued a 93-page report on New Priorities in South Asia.

The task force report drew the "core conclusion" that after Sep. 11, "South Asia has achieved an unprecedented importance to the U.S. on a range of issues and that Washington needs to treat it accordingly".

Three broad conclusions on South Asian countries are new and relevant from Pakistan's perspective.

First, while conceding that the U.S. government is at a "pivotal point in Afghanistan", the specter of the Taliban continues to haunt the U.S. There would also be "an enormous impact on Pakistan if the Taliban were to come back to power".

Second, while the report treats India as a "friendly country" whose interests "broadly coincide" with the U.S., it cites "potential obstacles" that could retard these ties.

Among these roadblocks are the rise of "Hindutva" or Hindu- nation ideology since "India's social and communal peace could be challenged by Hindu extremists".

Hitherto, the changing complexion of India's domestic politics has never been a factor in Indo-U.S. But now Hindu nationalism, akin to the rise of religious political forces in Muslim countries, is being perceived as a negative factor.

Third, while Pakistan is described in the report as "one of the most complex and difficult challenges facing U.S. diplomacy anywhere in the world today", the two countries' policies are said to "only partially coincide".

The report urges that U.S. aid to Pakistan "nurture civil society and NGOs", while seeking to "reduce military interference in political affairs". Earlier, Washington saw the military in Pakistan as its most reliable ally.

Cumulatively, these developments are pointers to an absence of clarity or vision from Washington, with ad hoc and often knee- jerk reactions passing for policy.

It is really a matter of shame that on Palestine, which Wolfowitz admitted is a "huge factor" in U.S.-Muslim world ties, no less a person than the Israeli chief of army staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon -- but not officials from the sole superpower -- has publicly attacked his government's policy.

He told Israeli newspapers last week that the policies of Sharon, to which Washington has mostly meekly acquiesced, such as crackdowns, curfews and roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza, were "now threatening Israeli interests".

Bush should look at his popularity ratings not just in the Muslim world, but in the rest of the world as well.

He got an over 90 percent negative rating in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, and two-thirds of Europeans find his Iraq war unjustified. Bush can exercise either of two options: Perpetuate policies in Afghanistan and Iraq and on the "war on terror" that are a recipe for disaster, or, act sensibly, by reversing wrongs.

He can start by acting with more spine on Palestine, and accepting that his "war on terror" is turning out to be a an unwinnable war without end. That choice will determine the U.S.' standing in the world.