U.S. Widening Its Interests in Islamic World, Officials Say

In a gradual but increasingly visible change since Sept. 11, the United States is shifting its focus and priorities in the Islamic world away from Arab nations, particularly states caught up in the Arab-Israeli conflict, to a wider set of interests in Asia, Africa and the Persian Gulf, according to U.S. officials and regional experts.

The terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon were the initial impetus, forcing the Bush administration to divert attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But there is also a growing consensus among experts both in and outside government that the next phase of political development in the Islamic world may not be determined by what emerges from the Arab-Israeli peace process, as was once widely assumed.

The unwillingness or inability of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to further that process is only a small part of a more fundamental problem, analysts say.

“There’s a strong sense in Washington that the Arab world, including moderate states, is being left behind. The Arab world appears stubbornly resistant to the forces of democratization, globalization and market economics,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former National Security Council staffer now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“As a result, the Arab-Israeli conflict no longer dominates our perspective in the region. It’s only one of several issues in the wider Islamic world,” Pollack said.

The United States is instead increasingly focusing on other models for the 50-plus nations of the Islamic world, the last major bloc of countries to hold out against the democratic tide that has swept the globe over the last two decades.

At the top of the list is a bold initiative by Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf. In December, he launched a crackdown on religious extremism and began promoting secularism as the first of several steps to transforming the strategic South Asian nation.

“Musharraf represents what we hope happens elsewhere in the Islamic world,” said a senior State Department official who asked not to be named. “His strategic choice to move swiftly down the course of moderation puts Pakistan on an entirely different track--with implications for the rest of the region.”

In contrast, Arafat’s inability to make a clear choice and carry it out has made the Palestinian leader “look even worse,” this official added.

The United States is also investing major diplomatic and economic resources to support Afghanistan’s fragile transition from the Islamic world’s most repressive regime to one with some form of representative government, a process that will play out over the next two years--and potentially serve as another paradigm.

Playing off the Bush administration’s plans to push harder for such change, Washington is even abuzz with talk of how a post-Saddam Hussein leadership in Iraq could be another model for a region hungry for new political direction.

“Arafat is the man of yesterday. Musharraf is the man of today. And the post-Saddam leader of Iraq is the man of tomorrow,” said Henri J. Barkey, a former State Department policy planning staffer and now chairman of Lehigh University’s international relations department.

The shift reflects one of the most significant if still subtle changes in U.S. foreign policy to emerge after Sept. 11. For decades, the issues of oil and Israel’s security have led Democratic and Republican administrations alike to devote the greatest time and energy to the Arab states that either border Israel or have vast petroleum reserves. The Middle East peace process, launched in 1993, intensified American involvement in the region. No leader from the Islamic world--or the wider world--visited the White House more often during the Clinton administration than Arafat.

Today, however, Arafat is persona non grata at the White House, while Musharraf just concluded a triumphant three-day visit to Washington, where he was widely sought-after to consult with congressional groups, speak to think tanks and make media appearances.

Interim Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, the other regional Asian leader to be warmly welcomed in Washington, sat next to First Lady Laura Bush during the president’s State of the Union address and received a standing ovation from the top officials of all three branches of the U.S. government.

Musharraf’s high-profile visit was a marked contrast to the mood in Washington just six months ago, when the Pakistani leader was unwelcome because in 1999 he led a military coup against a democratically elected government. This year, however, he has pledged to hold parliamentary elections in October.

“We want to curb religious fanaticism, religious extremism, religious intolerance, militancy, anger, hatred from our society,” Musharraf told the National Press Club, in what was music to the administration’s ears.

More important to the wider Islamic world and America’s long-term interests, however, is the fact that Musharraf is promoting the sweeping proposition that Islam is compatible with democracy.

“Islam is very democratic. I don’t think there is any contradiction in Islam and democracy functioning together in any part of the world,” he said on the PBS television show “NewsHour” recently.

“We are an Islamic state. However, that does not at all mean that it is a theocratic state,” he said. “The misperception in the West probably is that [an] Islamic state means a theocratic state. There is no room for theocracy in Islam. Therefore, that is an Islamic state which gives equal rights and status to minorities and all people in the country.”

At an international Islamic conference last month in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, Musharraf criticized the Muslim world for being backward and weak.

“The Muslim umma [community] is one-fourth of humanity, but we are the poorest, the most illiterate, the most backward, the most unhealthy and indeed the most deprived and weakest of the human race,” he said.

The former Soviet republics of Central Asia, which are overwhelmingly Muslim, are also garnering an increasing amount of attention from the United States. Since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has committed to working with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The wider war on terrorism has also turned U.S. attention to countries such as Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and the Philippines.

The growing frustration with the Arab world has even spurred talk in Washington about reducing dependence on Arab oil, Pollack said, “so that we can forget about the Mideast, so we don’t have to be held hostage to its problems.”

President Bush discussed that need last month.

“I understand it’s in the national interests, security interests, of the United States that we’re less dependent on foreign sources of energy,” the president said at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. “We’ve got to find energy in our own country.”