With a new interim government in place in Iraq, a clearer picture is emerging of the US global strategy of regime change embodied in its Pre-emptive Doctrine. For many of us who have been rather naïve in assuming that the US, under Bush, is simply a superpower that bludgeons itself through to impose its wishes, there is now a clearer indication of a covert aspect to the pre-emptive doctrine that is far more insidious and sinister in its design and ends. It seems to have taken some time for the US Administration to see the value of this covert policy - and one should, perhaps, give credit to Blair and the British for this, given their years of colonial experience and historical intrigues! In any case, this covert policy, as is the case with the whole regime change focus, is clearly aimed primarily at Muslim states - and not just Iraq or Afghanistan though that is where it is being operationalised right now. However, if we look at the political machinations in other Muslim states, we will be able to realise that the target for this US approach extends far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. The Broader Middle East Initiative - to which the Europeans with their Machiavellian heritage - have subscribed to, has a truly all-encompassing agenda: To redraw the political maps of domestic Muslim polities, including the structure of their political elites.

This, then, is the covert US agenda. And it is not as difficult to implement as may appear at first glance. In fact, with all the dissidents, technocrats and other typologies of Muslims from different Muslim states, residing over a long period of time in the West - that is, primarily the US, but also Britain and parts of so-called "old Europe" - with careful crafting, altering the structure of the political elites in Muslim states is not all that difficult. But clearly it cannot be done by simply imposing a few men from overseas on to a Muslim state outright - especially, if this is seen as a purely US intervention. The case of Chalabi shows the limitations of this approach. Many years earlier, in Pakistan the Moen Qureshi experience reflected similar shortcomings!

Of course, in the case of Iraq, the new interim government is also being imposed - but there is a subtle difference here also. The new government is supposedly a creation of the UN Representative, Brahimi — even though one cannot forget Brahimi’s own comments on the choices, especially his reference to the American Bremmer as the "dictator of Iraq". Either way, with a UN legitimation of the interim set-up in Iraq, the Interim government has an advantage over the Governing Council. But a glance at the background of the leading members of the Interim Iraqi Government should make people in the Muslim world examine the implications beyond Iraq.

The new Iraqi Minister of Communications is a former mobile network designer, and is a registered voter in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Minister of Power’s phone in Chicago, where he used to work for an engineering firm, still tells callers that he is simply on "an indefinite leave of absence". Iraq’s new Minister of Industry lived in the US since 1979 and only returned to Iraq in 2003. According to the US Council on Foreign Relations, five of the six leading posts in the new Iraqi government are held by people who lived abroad for a significant period of their lives and at least two of the new cabinet members are US citizens while eight, including Prime Minister Allawi, are members of exile groups financed by the US. According to a Shia doctor from the Diwaniya in southern Iraq, Raja al-Khuzai, "most of the ministers I think are British, American or French passport holders. Very few of them are Iraqis. That was not the idea when Brahimi first came here and sat next to me and said, 'We want people like you who stayed in Iraq’.

Clearly, the resentment is there in Iraq over such developments and over the fact that many of the Iraqi Governing Council, who have no office in the new set-up, are returning to their homes in the West - showing a lack of commitment and stake in the future of Iraq and its people. In fact, many kept their families outside and some never quit their jobs either. That is why Fuad Hussein, former minister of social affairs, has declared his intent of returning to his family in the Netherlands. The ex-interior minister, Samir Shakir Mahmoud al-Sumaiday, a London businessman is also returning to his family in Britain! Even Adnan Pachachi, who almost became president of Iraq, is returning to the United Arab Emirates.

Even more interesting is the profile of the new Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, a former dissident Baathist, who was involved in a CIA-backed plot against Saddam. He only returned to Iraq in April 2003. His family has had political connections in Iraq during the monarchy and he is even related to Chalabi by marriage. The CIA and British Intelligence are said to have backed his setting up of the Iraqi National Accord, which primarily consisted of military defectors from Saddam’s army - the idea being to set off a coup from within the military. He was a member of the Governing Council’s rotating leadership.

Iraq’s new President, Ghazi Yawer, is a businessman and tribal leader, from Mosul, as well as being a former exile. He studied engineering at Georgetown University in Washington, and for a long while had a telecoms company in Saudi Arabia. The Deputy Prime Minister for National Security Affairs, Barham Salih, is also very close to the Americans, having served as the Kurdistan Regional Government’s representative to the US for ten years - being a leader of one of the main Iraqi Kurdish groups - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The Defence Minister, Hazem Shaalan was forced to leave Iraq in 1985 and managed a real estate business in Britain. He was made Governor of Diwaniyah in April 2003.

In Afghanistan, one can trace a similar pattern with Mr Karzai’s long years in exile depriving him of local support amongst the Afghan Pushtuns. But here there is a subtler shift that is occurring within the Afghan elite society in terms of academia and policy makers. There has been an influx of Afghans - many with US nationality - into Kabul. Again their families remain outside Afghanistan.

The point in all this is clearly the pattern that can be seen, especially when one looks at the large Muslim world Diaspora in the West. So, rather than use brute military force, the US may turn to other covert options - or it may use the covert options alongside the direct intervention policy. Given the increasing destabilising of Saudi Arabia and the attacks on the Saudi Royal Family in the US media, it may be interesting to examine the names and activities of the Saudi Diaspora in the US and Britain - as well as in other parts of Europe.

This exercise can be expanded across the board to the Muslim world as a whole. The concern, of course, is that such imposed changes within domestic political structures and elites - whether overtly or covertly undertaken - create a whole class that, at best, has limited stakes in the country and therefore limited commitment. Where families are maintained abroad, and dual nationality is also a trait, this commitment becomes even more questionable. Worse still, we undermine the commitment of those who stayed home through bad times and survived the course of events. In the case of politicians, no matter how inept, they stuck it through their national crises. Should they be short shrifted by the privileged Diaspora and expats?

But even more ominous, these people are clearly meant to alter the national approach to issues and priorities. New agendas, new "thinking" (especially on sensitive issues like WMD) and approaches, favourable to the West and to the Western notion of modernity and "secularism" (despite most European states being Christian to their political core) are intended for the Muslim world. The agenda is already operationalised. But where are the Muslim World’s indigenous thinkers, politicians and leaders - those who will rise to the challenge and resist this indirect approach to what, at the end of the day, is a new type of brainwashing? Are we fated to be crushed between two extreme fundamentalisms? The answer will not be long in coming!

Shireen M Mazari
@hotmail.com

The writer is Director General of the
Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad
The views expressed by the writer are her own

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jun2004-daily/30-06-2004/oped/o3.
htm