The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (49 page)

The victory of the extremists is not necessarily permanent. Extremist violence is no more likely than moderate compromise to end a fault line war. As the costs in death and destruction escalate, with little to show for them, on each side moderates are likely to reappear, again pointing to the “senselessness” of it all and urging another attempt to end it through negotiations.

In the course of the war, multiple identities fade and the identity most meaningful in relation to the conflict comes to dominate. That identity almost always is defined by religion. Psychologically, religion provides the most reassuring and supportive justification for struggle against “godless” forces which are seen as threatening. Practically, its religious or civilizational community is the broadest community to which the local group involved in the conflict can appeal for support. If in a local war between two African tribes, one tribe can define itself as Muslim and the other as Christian, the former can hope to be bolstered by Saudi money, Afghan
mujahedeen,
and Iranian weapons and military advisers, while the latter can look for Western economic and humanitarian
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aid and political and diplomatic support from Western governments. Unless a group can do as the Bosnian Muslims did and convincingly portray itself as a victim of genocide and thereby arouse Western sympathy, it can only expect to receive significant assistance from its civilizational kin, and apart from the Bosnian Muslims, that has been the case. Fault line wars are by definition local wars between local groups with wider connections and hence promote civilizational identities among their participants.

The strengthening of civilizational identities has occurred among fault line war participants from other civilizations but was particularly prevalent among Muslims. A fault line war may have its origins in family, clan, or tribal conflicts, but because identities in the Muslim world tend to be
U-shaped
, as the struggle progresses the Muslim participants quickly seek to broaden their identity and appeal to all of Islam, as was the case even with an antifundamentalist secularist like Saddam Hussein. The Azerbaijan government similarly, one Westerner observed, played “the Islamic card.” In Tajikistan, in a war which began as an intra-Tajikistan regional conflict, the insurgents increasingly defined their cause as the cause of Islam. In the nineteenth-century wars between the North Caucasus peoples and the Russians, the Muslim leader Shamil termed himself an Islamist and united dozens of ethnic and linguistic groups “on the basis of Islam and resistance to Russian conquest.” In the 1990s Dudayev capitalized on the Islamic Resurgence that had taken place in the Caucasus in the 1980s to pursue a similar strategy. He was supported by Muslim clerics and Islamist parties, took his oath of office on the Koran (even as Yeltsin was blessed by the Orthodox patriarch), and in 1994 proposed that Chechnya become an Islamic state governed by
shari’a.
Chechen troops wore green scarves “emblazoned with the word ‘Gavazat,’ holy war in Chechen,” and shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they went off to battle.
[5]
In similar fashion, the self-definition of Kashmir Muslims shifted from either a regional identity encompassing Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists or an identification with Indian secularism to a third identity reflected in “the rise of Muslim nationalism in Kashmir and the spread of transnational Islamic fundamentalist values, which made Kashmiri Muslims feel a part of both Islamic Pakistan and the Islamic world.” The 1989 insurgency against India was originally led by a “relatively secular” organization, supported by the Pakistan government. Pakistan’s support then shifted to Islamic fundamentalist groups, which became dominant. These groups included “hardcore insurgents” who seemed “committed to continuing their
jihad
for its own sake whatever the hope and the outcome.” Another observer reported, “Nationalist feelings have been heightened by religious differences; the global rise of Islamic militancy has given courage to Kashmiri insurgents and eroded Kashmir’s tradition of Hindu-Muslim tolerance.”
[6]

A dramatic rise of civilizational identities occurred in Bosnia, particularly in its Muslim community. Historically, communal identities in Bosnia had not been strong; Serbs, Croats, and Muslims lived peacefully together as neighbors;
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intergroup marriages were common; religious identifications were weak. Muslims, it was said, were Bosnians who did not go to the mosque, Croats were Bosnians who did not go to the cathedral, and Serbs were Bosnians who did not go to the Orthodox church. Once the broader Yugoslav identity collapsed, however, these casual religious identities assumed new relevance, and once fighting began they intensified. Multicommunalism evaporated and each group increasingly identified itself with its broader cultural community and defined itself in religious terms. Bosnian Serbs became extreme Serbian nationalists, identifying themselves with Greater Serbia, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the more widespread Orthodox community. Bosnian Croats were the most fervent Croatian nationalists, considered themselves to be citizens of Croatia, emphasized their Catholicism, and together with the Croats of Croatia their identity with the Catholic West.

The Muslims’ shift toward civilizational consciousness was even more marked. Until the war got underway Bosnian Muslims were highly secular in their outlook, viewed themselves as Europeans, and were the strongest supporters of a multicultural Bosnian society and state. This began to change, however, as Yugoslavia broke up. Like the Croats and Serbs, in the 1990 elections the Muslims rejected the multicommunal parties, voting overwhelmingly for the Muslim Party of the Democratic Action (SDA) led by Izetbegovic. He is a devout Muslim, was imprisoned for his Islamic activism by the communist government, and in a book,
The Islamic Declaration,
published in 1970, argues for “the incompatibility of Islam with non-Islamic systems. There can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic religion and non-Islamic social and political institutions.” When the Islamic movement is strong enough it must take power and create an Islamic republic. In this new state, it is particularly important that education and the media “should be in the hands of people whose Islamic moral and intellectual authority is indisputable.”
[7]

As Bosnia became independent Izetbegovic promoted a multiethnic state, in which the Muslims would be the dominant group although short of a majority. He was not, however, a person to resist the Islamization of his country produced by the war. His reluctance to repudiate publicly and explicitly
The Islamic Declaration,
generated fear among non-Muslims. As the war went on, Bosnian Serbs and Croats moved from areas controlled by the Bosnian government, and those who remained found themselves gradually excluded from desirable jobs and participation in social institutions. “Islam gained greater importance within the Muslim national community, and . . . a strong Muslim national identity became a part of politics and religion.” Muslim nationalism, as opposed to Bosnian multicultural nationalism, was increasingly expressed in the media. Religious teaching expanded in the schools, and new textbooks emphasized the benefits of Ottoman rule. The Bosnian language was promoted as distinct from Serbo-Croatian and more and more Turkish and Arabic words were incorporated into it. Government officials attacked mixed marriages and
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the broadcasting of “aggressor” or Serbian music. The government encouraged the Islamic religion and gave Muslims preference in hirings and promotions. Most important, the Bosnian army became Islamized, with Muslims constituting over 90 percent of its personnel by 1995. More and more army units identified themselves with Islam, engaged in Islamic practices, and made use of Muslim symbols, with the elite units being the most thoroughly Islamized ones and expanding in number. This trend led to a protest from five members (including two Croats and two Serbs) of the Bosnian presidency to Izetbegovic, which he rejected, and to the resignation in 1995 of the multicultural-oriented prime minister, Haris Silajdzic.
[8]

Politically Izetbegovic’s Muslim party, the SDA, extended its control over Bosnian state and society. By 1995 it dominated “the army, the civil service and public enterprises.” “Muslims who do not belong to the party,” it was reported, “let alone non-Muslims, find it hard to get decent jobs.” The party, its critics charged, had “become a vehicle for an Islamic authoritarianism marked by the habits of Communist government.”
[9]
Overall, another observer reported:

Muslim nationalism is becoming more extreme. It now takes no account of other national sensibilities; it is the property, privilege, and political instrument of the newly predominant Muslim nation. . . .

The main result of this new Muslim nationalism is a movement towards national homogenization. . . .

Increasingly, Islamic religious fundamentalism is also gaining dominance in determining Muslim national interests.
[10]

The intensification of religious identity produced by war and ethnic cleansing, the preferences of its leaders, and the support and pressure from other Muslim states were slowly but clearly transforming Bosnia from the Switzerland of the Balkans into the Iran of the Balkans.

In fault line wars, each side has incentives not only to emphasize it own civilizational identity but also that of the other side. In its local war, it sees itself not just fighting another local ethnic group but fighting another civilization. The threat is thus magnified and enhanced by the resources of a major civilization, and defeat has consequences not just for itself but for all of its own civilization. Hence the urgent need for its own civilization to rally behind it in the conflict. The local war becomes redefined as a war of religions, a clash of civilizations, fraught with consequences for huge segments of humankind. In the early 1990s as the Orthodox religion and the Orthodox Church again became central elements in Russian national identity, which “squeezed out other Russian confessions, of which Islam is the most important,”
[11]
the Russians found it in their interest to define the war between clans and regions in Tajikistan and the war with Chechnya as parts of a broader clash going back centuries between Orthodoxy and Islam, with its local opponents now commit
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ted to Islamic fundamentalism and jihad and the proxies for Islamabad, Tehran, Riyadh, and Ankara.

In the former Yugoslavia, Croats saw themselves as the gallant frontier guardians of the West against the onslaught of Orthodoxy and Islam. The Serbs defined their enemies not just as Bosnian Croats and Muslims but as “the Vatican” and as “Islamic fundamentalists” and “infamous Turks” who have been threatening Christianity for centuries. “Karadzic,” one Western diplomat said of the Bosnian Serb leader, “sees this as the anti-imperialist war in Europe. He talks about having a mission to eradicate the last traces of the Ottoman Turkish empire in Europe.”
[12]
The Bosnian Muslims, in turn, identified themselves as the victims of genocide, ignored by the West because of their religion, and hence deserving of support from the Muslim world. All the parties to, and most outside observers of, the Yugoslav wars thus came to see them as religious or ethnoreligious wars. The conflict, Misha Glenny pointed out, “increasingly assimilated the characteristics of a religious struggle, defined by three great European faiths—Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Islam, the confessional detritus of the empires whose frontiers collided in Bosnia.”
[13]

The perception of fault line wars as civilizational clashes also gave new life to the domino theory which had existed during the Cold War. Now, however, it was the major states of civilizations who saw the need to prevent defeat in a local conflict, which could trigger a sequence of escalating losses leading to disaster. The Indian government’s tough stand on Kashmir derived in large part from the fear that its loss would stimulate other ethnic and religious minorities to push for independence and thus lead to the breakup of India. If Russia did not end the political violence in Tajikistan, Foreign Minister Kozyrev warned, it was likely to spread to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. This, it was argued, could then promote secessionist movements in the Muslim republics of the Russian Federation, with some people suggesting the ultimate result might be Islamic fundamentalism in Red Square. Hence the Afghan-Tajik border, Yeltsin said, is “in effect, Russia’s.” Europeans, in turn, expressed concern that the establishment of a Muslim state in the former Yugoslavia would create a base for the spread of Muslim immigrants and Islamic fundamentalism, reinforcing what the French press, interpreting Jacques Chirac, termed “
les odeurs d’lslam
” in Europe.
[14]
Croatia’s border is, in effect, Europe’s.

As a fault line war intensifies, each side demonizes its opponents, often portraying them as subhuman, and thereby legitimates killing them. “Mad dogs must be shot,” said Yeltsin in reference to the Chechen guerrillas. “These ill-bred people have to be shot . . . and we will shoot them,” said Indonesian General Try Sutrisno referring to the massacre of East Timorese in 1991. The devils of the past are resurrected in the present: Croats become “Ustashe”; Muslims, “Turks”; and Serbs, “Chetniks.” Mass murder, torture, rape, and the brutal expulsion of civilians all are justifiable as communal hate feeds on communal hate. The central symbols and artifacts of the opposing culture
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become targets. Serbs systematically destroyed mosques and Franciscan monasteries while Croats blew up Orthodox monasteries. As repositories of culture, museums and libraries are vulnerable, with the Sinhalese security forces burning the Jaffna public library, destroying “irreplaceable literary and historical documents” related to Tamil culture, and Serbian gunners shelling and destroying the National Library in Sarajevo. The Serbs cleanse the Bosnian town of Zvornik of its 40,000 Muslims and plant a cross on the site of the Ottoman tower they have just blown up which had replaced the Orthodox church razed by the Turks in 1463.
[15]
In wars between cultures, culture loses.