In search of the lost or.., p.12
In Search of the Lost Orient, page 12
So it was with this in mind that I sought to question and understand the Chinese view of the whole matter. Naturally, this was preceded by an extensive feast during which I took a definitive dislike of “100-year-old eggs,” which I just couldn’t swallow, even with the help of several glasses of local vodka. But it turned out not to be very helpful as I started to realize that the Chinese were not really interested in the religious or ideological dimensions of the conflict. They were waiting to see who would win, convinced that geostrategic factors would outweigh everything else in the end. They believed that the time would come when, after the other powers had become fed up with their interventions, they could advance their economic interests in the region.
This trip was part of a larger project. Between 1986 and 1987, I was making many trips to the United States, where I made the rounds among Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon, think tanks, universities, and the media. The alarm bell I was ringing said essentially this: Wake up! You have to plan for the postwar situation and make better choices about who your aid recipients are going to be. I was given a cordial welcome, but not many listened to me. A sentimental Frenchman spreading propaganda for his buddy Massoud—that was how most perceived me.
And you go back to Afghanistan two more times.
Personally, I didn’t want to return to Afghanistan, at least not clandestinely. Going every year, as I had been doing, was really tempting fate. But in 1987 we did go back with Alain Guillo, a freelance photographer-journalist friend. We crossed the border together with a sixty-vehicle convoy of arms to be delivered to resistance fighters. It was the high-water mark of the flow of arms then. We traversed half the country sitting on crates of weapons and ammunition that could have been blown up any minute with a mine, a rocket launched from a helicopter, or from simple stupidity since whenever they were bored, young mujahideen loved playing with ammo. It was obviously a bad idea, including from a political standpoint. We separated from Alain in the mountains. A few days later, he was captured by the Soviets and was later transferred to the sinister Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul. The sword of Damocles had fallen right beside us. The night he was captured, we were sleeping hidden in a cave near Salang Tunnel, and Chantal woke up in the middle of the night and cried out, “Something’s happened to Alain!” When we went back through Nuristan, the journalist Andy Skrzypkowiak had just been assassinated a few days before, and the caravan of Solidarité Afghanistan had also been pillaged. Things were definitely heating up and becoming more and more corrupt.
I didn’t want to continue with this routine, doing another trip year after year. The situation was changing, and I thought I needed to find a new way to be present in Afghanistan. It was then that on December 31, 1987, just before the clock struck midnight, a call came through to me in my half-drunken state from an American diplomat friend who informed me that the Russians were soon going to leave Afghanistan. Why was he telling me this? Who was his source? I never found out. A bit shook up by this news, I went to see Jacques Amalric a few days later. Amalric was the head of foreign coverage for Le Monde and an expert on the USSR. He told me, “It’s not possible, because if the Russians leave, it’s the end of the Soviet Union.” He was both wrong, since it was possible, and right, since it would indeed be the end of the Soviet Union.
In February 1988, Gorbachev announced, just as my informant had predicted, the withdrawal of Soviet troops, and so then preparing for the aftermath was all the more necessary. The UN named a coordinator for Afghan affairs, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, the uncle of the Aga Khan, and the prince contacted me and Chantal and asked us to join his staff. We received special UN passports and worked with the coordinator with the idea of creating conditions for a post-Soviet peace.
So with this new post your status changed. Did the job also change you?
Yes, this job was my first experience in the official world of international relations. I was no longer a consultant but in charge of a negotiation process. Of course, I didn’t participate in the upper-level discussions; instead, I was given the responsibility of making more discreet, unofficial contact with various individuals. This was more suited to my background—being a sort of free floating particle whose existence was easily deniable. Specifically, I was chosen to negotiate with the Iranians and get them to permit the UN to open an access corridor through Iranian territory to the west of Afghanistan. This meant negotiating with Ismail Khan, the leader of the resistance in that region and therefore the obligatory interlocutor, so that our delegation could pass through the area even though it was proceeding under the authority of Iran, which he hated at the time. I was not the only one conducting these negotiations—there was also the representative of the High Commission on Refugees in Tehran—but the advantage for me was to get myself for once on the official side of the room. Since I knew the Afghans, I was particularly adept at playing the role of local facilitator. After four months of negotiations, we obtained from the Iranians the right to pass through Iran, on condition that we bring along with us Iranian officials who, of course, were affiliated with their foreign service and secret police. I became reacquainted with revolutionary Iran, but this time observing backstage the various services, the border guards, the internal rivalries, the distrust, and all of it covered with a most exquisite icing of politeness. We were housed in Iranian military barracks and entered Afghanistan in UN vehicles equipped with blue flags and radios, after having alerted the Russians beforehand of our arrival. Since I had already spent time in Herat in 1982, I knew Ismail Khan well. The goal now was to negotiate a local agreement so that the withdrawal of the Russians proceeded in orderly fashion. They were to leave Afghanistan by February 1989, and it was then December 1988.
So this UN delegation was of course very international?
True, the UN delegation included three Turks, someone from Quebec, a Muslim Indian, and the two of us, Chantal and myself. No one except us had ever spent time in Afghanistan or spoke Persian. Once we crossed into “Afgha,” I came upon my former contacts from 1982; but things were enormously tense because the Iranians preferred to deal with the local Shiites, whereas Ismail Khan was a committed Sunni, very anti-Shiite, and insisted that everything go through his authority. We established a file with all the petty local chiefs of the resistance but accorded Ismail Khan preeminent status, while also forcing him to allow the Shiites to participate in the discussions. We also had to tread carefully with the Russians, who, officially, were still the representatives of the Communist government and refused officially to conduct discussions with the mujahideen. Together with the local government, the Russians still controlled Herat, and they had installed a line of defense around the city and forbade all attempts to approach this security perimeter. We were situated at the intersection of this power face-off among, on one side, Russians; on another, Iranians, who had the clear intention of bringing Herat within their sphere of influence; and on yet another, Ismail Khan, who insisted on having a monopoly on representing the resistance. In addition, there were the rivalries among UN agencies that disputed who was in charge of this or that operation and who didn’t hesitate to exploit local rivalries and found themselves in turn being exploited by those local rivalries. Understanding and untangling—that was my mission.
When we decided to go around the Russian blockade and get closer to Herat, we had to leave our vehicles because they couldn’t get through, as well as the protection of the blue flags, and proceed on horseback, even though our steeds would not have diplomatic license plates. Ismail Khan wanted us to see that he alone controlled access to the city, and I wanted my colleagues to see that this was indeed the case. A skilled communicator, he had prepared a welcome committee composed of his troops. In a large field he had assembled fifteen hundred of his mujahideen fighters who stood at attention in a U-shaped formation. He then suggested or, rather, nudged us, to make a speech. The Turkish head of our delegation, a very secular, Kemalist diplomat who on principle wanted to remain neutral, let himself get carried away in this atmosphere and made a rousing pronouncement—which he asked that I translate at the top of my lungs and with no microphone—about the just fight against the oppressor. May I say I consider that translation to have been the most shameful moment of my life. Whipped into a lyrical lather that was no longer really secular, he cried out, “And may God keep your martyrs under his very holy protection,” which I rendered as, “And may God keep your martyrs in good health” all the while being immediately aware of my slip-up. Solemn speeches are really not my thing!
Obviously, the Russians did not look kindly on this violation of the tacit accord, and the next day, as we were getting ready to saddle up, they attacked us with two fighter planes that bore down and shot at us with machine guns. We were about fifteen, entirely exposed in a soccer field–sized area, but by extraordinary good fortune no one was injured. I saw the impact of bullets on the ground in front of me as one sees happen in cartoons. We ran to shelter ourselves in the irrigation ditches, which were full since it was winter. After it was over, we climbed out wet but alive, and we hurried to contact Geneva as quickly as possible and get the UN to tell the Russians to stop their attack. To do that, someone had to get the radio and its antenna going and make contact. This was not easy to do since at the time telecommunications were not what they are today. We still relied on antennae that needed to be deployed and relay vehicles that were back at the Iranian border to send short-wave messages. Despite all that we accomplished, our mission went more or less as we’d planned, but right up to the last minute the reality of the war was there and therefore the risks.
And so was that your final exit from Afghanistan?
When we returned to Geneva, I thought it was over for me in Afghanistan—or in any case that it was not wise to return because we had really cut it too close. One day the crazy luck that we had benefited from would not be there, and we’d all be killed because even though we were on an official mission we had almost died out there. And besides, there was nothing left to do since the diplomatic machine was now turning its wheels, as were the wheels of internal war, and therefore the expertise we’d acquired could serve only to establish relations to help with a decision that would arrive too late or end up being beside the point. But Chantal did not share my view. She preferred to stay. The UN took her on as part of the staff that was to consolidate the peace. She settled in Kabul, and it was the beginning of a gradual separation between the two of us.
Chapter 12
THE FAILURE OF POLITICAL ISLAM
It’s the end of the ’80s, you’ve been on the road for years, but you’re also a CNRS member. How did you get your foot back in the stirrup of theory?
I returned to France in January 1989. I should have mentioned that as a member of the CNRS I didn’t have the right to enter Afghanistan, not even on behalf of the UN. But I had built up a sort of double life: on the one hand I was covered by the French Foreign Ministry, which was issuing mission papers to me as a consultant; and on the other the CNRS, which was paying my salary and looked the other way when I went to Afghanistan because in fact they had authorized me to do this consulting work for the Foreign Ministry, part-time of course. The CNRS always renewed this authorization, even if belatedly a low-level bureaucrat who held the position of high functionary of defense at the CNRS did all he could to block researchers from doing research by declaring half of the globe a prohibited zone. Consulting had even become a CV enhancer—thanks to the rubric “valorization of research”—for those wishing to burnish their careers at the CNRS. In my view, it was a good thing since, when confronting practical issues, you are forced to do true political science and you avoid the jargon-filled and abstract bloviating that has today become the norm in political science, especially in the American context, where it’s common to no longer confront the test of reality. I spent twenty-five years as a consultant at the CAP, and I left when in the spring of 2009 Bernard Kouchner, who had become the minister of foreign affairs, kindly offered me the post of director. Now that changed everything! I developed a solid network for myself at the ministry, but also among journalists, the military, foreign diplomats, and, I’ll admit it, the secret services, all the while remaining in the background as a simple observer or small-time operator carrying out more or less unofficial missions. That discretion suited me because it left me free and I never really wanted to climb any higher.
The end of the annual travel ritual in 1988 left me with more time for other things. I resumed my research on Iran. The first Gulf War, the start of the Algerian crisis, and the recurring theme of an Islamic threat mobilized an entire team of young diplomats and researchers within the CAP. Together they churned out reports, conducted meetings, led debates, did field work, etc. I learned a great deal from this work and the research on countries I hardly knew at all even though I was also beginning to make trips again to the Middle East.
I brought all that together in L’Échec de l’islam politique, which was published in 1992 but written in 1990–1991.1 In it I articulate the lessons I learned from my many experiences over the previous years in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. I also take up the Algerian affair, especially the electoral victory of the FIS (Front islamique du salut) that was violently overturned by the army in 1991. I had plenty of material to work from.
The title of the book was misunderstood.
Yes, many thought I was announcing the end of all references to Islam in politics or that I considered it impossible for Islamists to take power—both are absurd misunderstandings. In fact, what the book really explains is the structural failure of Islamist ideology for two reasons: either the religion destroys the state, or else the state destroys the religion. If one defines an Islamic state (and the same is true for a religious state of any denomination) as one in which the state recognizes only the sovereignty of God and implements only religious law, well, then the state has renounced its own sovereignty and there no longer is a state—everyone simply appeals to what he defines as religious law.
This was the spontaneous tendency of the qadi—those who made judgments according to sharia. They refused all codification and all intervention of the state. But it was an unsustainable situation: first for the state, which could not accept being stripped of all law, and second for the society, because there was no place and time for a final, supreme decision—a situation reminiscent of the society depicted in the Borges allegory “The Lottery in Babylon.”2 Moreover, claiming that state law is religious law supposes that there is someone who can say what the religious law is—because God is silent—and that’s the big problem for theocracies. In this situation one may defer perhaps to a group of doctors of law, for example Iran’s Council of Guardians or Saudi Arabia’s Council of Ulema. But what happens when there is a contradiction between state law, be it voted into law by parliament or decreed by the sovereign, and the religious norm decreed by the ulema? The latter have no means to require the politician or politicians to yield except for anathema or the excommunication of kings, as was practiced by popes in the Middle Ages with very limited success. Therefore, it’s always the state that decides, either by annulling decisions, putting the ulema in prison, naming more docile ulema, and so on. The politician or politicians are the obvious deciders of the place of religion, and not the reverse. The Iranian solution, a possibility in Shiism but not in Sunnism, is to affirm that a “doctor of the law,” the guide, can occupy both functions and be the highest political authority as well as the highest religious authority. But who decides who will be the highest religious authority, and who installs that individual in power? Once again, it’s the politician or politicians. Officially, in Iran the guide is chosen by a council of experts that itself is elected by the nation. And any and all compromises of principle by the guide, in business or in purely political affairs, automatically destroys his status as the man who is held to be the most virtuous—and such a downfall occurs immediately, either by his own hand or by his children. It’s one of the few good arguments in favor of the celibacy of priests! The truly virtuous man is one who avoids getting involved in politics and who speaks as little as possible. The Iraqi ayatollah Ali al-Sistani understood this, and so does the Dalai Lama. One always encounters the same tension: in a religious state, only the state remains standing.
In 1995 I gave a talk in Qom, the holy city of Iran. My audience was composed of mullahs who, like you, demanded that I explain my title, The Failure of Political Islam. Their reply to the aporia I presented was to say that, unlike with Sunnism, Shiism had the concept of the Grand Ayatollah, which solved the problem of the two powers. Then I asked them, “But who decides who will be the guide?” Silence. Then a young mullah stood in the back of the room and shouted out, “The Kalashnikov!” Half the room burst out laughing, and the other half started protesting. That said it all.
But the very concept of Islamism or political Islam was controversial, no?
Yes, I was criticized for having invented not just the concept but also and especially the very category in question. The journal Esprit organized a debate on the subject in which I defend the specificity of the concept and its object: a modern political movement that considers Islam as a political ideology with a view toward state building (putting in place an Islamic state) and not simply as a juridical framework based on the implementation of sharia.3 Of course, there is always a bit of arbitrariness when one tries to define an object and distinguish it from something else with which it could be considered to be in continuity. The Muslim Brotherhood is a religious collective, and it also wants to implement sharia, but the concept of Islamism can claim a heuristic value. One can easily see today that it’s indispensable to understand the specific nature of the Muslim Brotherhood in relation to other religious movements, such as the Salafists, for example. Otherwise, one can’t understand anything about what’s going on in Egypt. What’s more, the interested parties, who in the 1980s rejected the concept of Islamism that was attributed to them, later often took it up themselves, and I was invited by them to Iran but also to Turkey to debate what I had called their failure. What’s interesting is that here again there is an interaction between research and its object, because this object is also a subject that reads, thinks, and acts—and is therefore interested in what is said about it or them. And inversely, the researcher who is accused of Orientalism or of being a neocolonial agent is obliged to think through the positing, value, and evaluation of his or her ideas. Here’s an example of how the social sciences can influence the subjects they treat as objects of study: in Turkey the young managers who were going to build the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in the 1980s touted their modernity and compared themselves to Protestants with a work ethic similar to that of the Calvinists that is also to be found in Islamist entrepreneurs. One day I asked a leader in this organization (TÜSIAD, Turkish Industry and Business Association) if he had ever read Luther or Calvin. He looked at me, surprised. “No, of course not.” So where had he come up with his concept of work ethic? “You know,” he answered, “in the writings of Western sociologists like Max Weber!”
