Islamic Charity Ultimately Trumps Western Firepower

Muqtada's biggest battle already won
By Sreeram Chaulia

A new study by the Washington DC-based advocacy organization, Refugees
International, reveals that Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militant force,
Jaish-al-Mahdi, is the largest social welfare dispenser in Iraq.

It is a tribute to the Mahdi Army's successful adaptation of the model
pioneered by Hezbollah in Lebanon.
When survival needs of food, water, housing, electricity and protection are in
short supply, and the state apparatus is unable or unwilling to come to the
rescue of the population, radical non-state actors can exploit the vacuum and
step in as provider of last resort.

The quid pro quo here is that the militant outfit's benevolence earns political
legitimacy from the poor who bear the brunt of war. In return for rebuilding
homes, hospitals, schools and places of worship destroyed by the enemy, the
outfit wins fanatical loyalty from its target constituency. Since militant
armies rely on guerrilla-style warfare, their core strength lies in mass public
approval and participation in their ranks. Popularity is the treasury of a
guerrilla movement that sustains it in asymmetrical war against conventionally
superior foes. It is arguably as crucial to a militant force as backing from
foreign state sponsors.

To be loved by the people on whose behalf an armed struggle is being waged is
the dream of revolutionaries. It satisfies their psychological need for
confirmation that the armed movement is indeed benefiting those they claim to
be emancipating. Self-doubts can be costly for a guerrilla group, opening the
door to defections, apostasy or factionalism. The government or foreign
invading army against which the struggle is being waged can pounce on any signs
of regret or introspection by militants and sow internal splits that can undo
an outfit. Steady nurturing of mass popularity is an existential necessity for
militant groups to remain cohesive and steadfast to their objectives. Mao
Zedong, the classic exponent of people's war, highlighted another important
function of cultivating popular support. In his apt metaphor, without the
"ocean" of mass sympathy, the "fish" of the revolutionary
army would die asphyxiated. However destitute and harassed, slum dwellers or
landless laborers can shelter guerrillas on the run, offer local contacts and
information, and even join them in battle as an auxiliary force.

In effect, this sets up a symbiotic relationship between militants and their
constituents. The former's humanitarian assistance becomes a lifeline for the
poor, and the latter's affection becomes the shield for the guerrillas. In
insurrection theory, the two-way-street leads to a merger of the party or rebel
outfit and its people to the extent that the two become indistinguishable.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, for instance, use the
slogan "LTTE is the Tamil people and the Tamil people are the LTTE".
A war on the outfit, by extension, gets interpreted as a war on the people it
defends.

The American invasion of Iraq
in 2003 and the post-Saddam Hussein chaos created the perfect conditions of
desperation in which the Jaish-al-Mahdi rose to astounding prominence.

Although Muqtada's father, Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, was a venerable grand
ayatollah during Saddam's dictatorship, it was not expected that the son would
go on to become a kingmaker in Iraqi politics and a thorn in the flesh for the
American occupation forces.

His Mahdi Army, which began as a ragtag band of 500 Shi'ite seminary students
to enforce vigilante justice in 2003, now boasts of over 10,000 dedicated
mujahideen and millions of lay sympathizers won over by charitable activities.

The rise of this new force is, in many ways, the story of all that went horribly
wrong with the American neo-conservative roadmap of remaking the Middle East. While Muqtada would bristle at his
description as an "American creation", the fact is his outfit turned
into a state-within-a-state thanks to the George W Bush administration's
actions since 2003. Had there been no American invasion to topple Saddam and
subsequent stationing of foreign troops on Iraqi soil, the world would not have
witnessed the phenomenon that the Mahdi Army morphed into.

This observation is seconded by the similar trajectories of two other Islamist
guerrilla groups in the Middle East - Hezbollah in Lebanon
and Hamas in Palestine.
Counter-factually, we would not have had these movements if there were no
Israeli aggressions on Lebanon
or the Palestinian territories. Islamist militancy is essentially reactionary -
a spiritual and temporal response to perceived oppression by foreign or
homebred enemies. Once the reaction sets in and takes an organized form, it
becomes a Janus-faced humanitarian-cum-terrorist machine. On the one hand, the
outfit is the very epitome of kindness and Samaritanism to its own people. On
the other hand, it strikes fear into the heart of the enemies with alleged
Koranic sanction.

The usage of the charity model by Islamists is not limited to the Middle East. When a devastating earthquake shook Pakistan in
October 2005, the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) launched its own independent
relief efforts, bypassing the corruption and red tape typical of governmental
responses to disasters. The visible and efficient services of LeT and its
sister religious bodies won instant appreciation among the suffering victims
and furthered the sentiment in Pakistan's
frontier and Kashmir regions that the government in Islamabad was incapable of succoring its citizens.


The delegitimization of the state, a civic authority mandated to care for its
citizens, went in tow with extra legitimization of jihadi ideology among
ordinary Pakistanis. As was to be expected in the relief-for-loyalty exchange,
LeT operatives took hundreds of orphaned children under its wing for
indoctrination in its extensive network of orphanages and madrassas (seminaries). LeT was also found to be offering "employment" to
several people who lost their livelihoods in the natural calamity. It was no
coincidence that a spate of LeT-ascribed terrorist attacks occurred in India shortly after the earthquake in Pakistan.

While the usage of humanitarian garb to recruit despondent youth for terrorist
purposes is not unique to Islamist outfits, the special theological emphasis in
Islam on charity (zakaat) is unmatched among world religions. Saudi
Arabian charities are particularly notorious for fundraising in the name of
social service and channeling enormous sums to wherever there is a jihadi cause
to be aided.

The International Islamic Relief Organization, proscribed by the United Nations
in 2006, used to be one major outlet of Saudi Arabian zeal for charity that
boosted jihad in the Philippines
and Indonesia.
The al-Rasheed Trust, exposed in 2001, was run by Pakistan's Jaish-i-Muhammad. It was
the brainchild of the Inter-Services Intelligence to fudge finances for
terrorist attacks in Afghanistan
and Indian-administered Kashmir in the guise
of social work.

As long as Jaish-al-Mahdi harnesses its religiously enjoined humanitarian image
among downtrodden Shi'ites in Baghdad and
southern Iraq, no frontal
military assaults by the US
and Iraqi armies can succeed in displacing Muqtada from his perch as the
country's Robin Hood.

Israel
is learning this lesson the hard way against its bete noires, Hezbollah and
Hamas. Actions like the present blockade of the Gaza Strip, purportedly aimed
at weakening terrorist movements, cause humanitarian crises that drive
sufferers closer into the embrace of the movements. Punitive expeditions like
the military assault on the Jaish-al-Mahdi will likewise exacerbate the
protection deficit in Iraq
and vindicate the success of the militant social work model.

Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international affairs at the
Maxwell School of Citizenship in Syracuse, New York.

Source: Asia Times
Online

            The
Real News