Money Talks?

Is it possible that radical Islam is Westernizing? Two recent stories may indicate just that. The higher profile story comes from Lebanon, where the Lebanese army had been promised $100 million in arms to help it control its border with Israel and prevent Hizbullah terrorists from attacking Israel.

However, recently, when the Lebanese army used its weapons to attack an Israeli border patrol in a similar fashion to the Hizbullah raid that started the 2006 war, the US congress rescinded its support for the Lebanese Army. People were still debating the usefulness of such a move when Iran stepped in and announced it would happily fund the shortfall to ensure that “Lebanon can protect itself against aggression.”

That same, week Pakistan began suffering from devastating mass flooding. The Pakistan floods have left over 12 million people homeless, so the Pakistani government called for international aid. At that point, the TTP, the Pakistani Taliban, announced that if the government refused to take aid from non-Muslim countries, the Taliban would cover the cost of the refused aid.

Iran’s offer to essentially buy the Lebanese Army seems much more plausible, since Iran would only be paying a tenth of what they annually give to Syria. As well, Iran has been paying for Syria to arm Hizbullah for a long time, so arming the Lebanese Army may just mean merging the two armed groups.

On the other hand, the non-Muslim G7 countries were pledging billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan’s government. Whatever rumors of Osama Bin Laden’s wealth one may believe, it is doubtful that the Taliban controls even a fraction of the money necessary to make its proposed deal worthwhile.

However, what interests me about these two situations is the inversion of tactics from, what are assumed to be, the most ideologically driven groups.

For quite some time, Iran has had its hooks in Lebanon. Its Shiite clients, Amal and Hizbullah openly benefit from Iranian largesse and push for a more Shia Muslim society. However, the more secularly led Lebanese Army are theoretically subservient to the ruling March 14 Coalition and are nominally Iran’s ideological enemy. Similarly, the TTP is effectively at war with Pakistan’s government, trying to turn Pakistan into a Sunni version of Iran.

Both Iran and the Taliban are now trying to buy influence, even from governments to which they are ideologically opposed. This brings to mind America’s famous HOSOB strategy used on countries such as Iran during the Cold War. HOSOB is an acronym for “He’s our son of a bitch” as in: “That dictator is a son of a bitch, but as long as we’re paying him, at least he’s our son of a bitch.” And that propping up brutal dictators was worth the money to keep their countries from becoming Soviet clients. Of course, unlike America, today’s influence shoppers probably feel that enough money will not only co-opt their enemy into their sphere of influence, but may actually allow their ideology to take hold and eventually take over.

Still, this is a very Western attitude to take and it strikes me as interesting that both Iran and the Taliban would make such offers in the same month. Also interesting is that the US congress departed from the HOSOB strategy and retracted funds from the Lebanese Army on an ideological basis, when they realized that there was little operational difference between them and Hizbullah.

These developments may be very worrying to some foreign policy watchers. Iran’s purchase of the Lebanese Army essentially gives it operational control over Lebanon, and allows Hizbullah to cement its control. Also, while Pakistan’s government couldn’t seriously consider the TTP’s offer, since it needed actual help and aid for actual citizens, the Taliban may have regained some of it waning popular support for making a seemingly principled statement that Muslims should not accept money from the “imperialist” West.

However, I see in these developments a positive aspect in that the theoretically fundamentalist parties are now willing to “sell out.” They see sufficient weakness in their ideology to need to bribe others into aligning with them, and they are appealing to the Western ideal that money can solve all problems. At the same time, the USA has taken a more principled position and will hopefully regain an ideological confidence, necessary to assert democratic principles around the world and only rewarding their ideal supporters instead of paying off democracy’s worst detractors.

It is this ideological strength and confidence that will allow the Western world to spread its values of freedom and truly win the “hearts and minds” of the global village. It might be that the global Jihad has stretched its extremist ideology too thin across the globe and we must use this moment of its self-doubt to our advantage.