Daily Times

Whatever happens to unprecedented revolutionary uprisings in the Middle East, one thing is clear: the US will have to deal with tougher parties at the other end. Whether the religious right has its way or genuinely elected governments take root in the Arab world, the US will lose its traditional domineering negotiating position it held by supporting one despot or the other. The worst part is that the US will be clueless whom to support or oppose.

There is a high probability that in an open democratic space the religious right will dominate the ideological discourse and hence political power. The dictatorial rules with the US help or urging have been very harsh on the leftist socialist groups. Sometimes the dictators were against religious fundamentalists, but the faith-based parties had the advantage of the mosque. No ruler could demolish the mosques and hence the religious right always had an advantage of assembly and planning in dictatorial Islamic countries.

When the ideologies have to compete in the open democratic space, it is always a match between the religious right and the socialist left. Since the Left has been put down during the dictatorial rule, the religious right is always in a better position to dominate. In addition, the old or the new money is mostly hostile to the Left due to understandable reasons. The key state institutions prefer the religious right because they do not challenge the economic status quo.

The US prefers the so-called capitalist ideology in which free market and democratic political setup are considered to be essential. However, the problem is in countries where industrialisation has not taken roots, the capitalist ideology does not work. India may be the only exception where such an ideology has been semi-functional but Indian bourgeoisie was very mature. Furthermore, being an exceptional case, India is only an outlier and no forecast can be based on this example. More likely, the religious right or socialist left controls the political discourse.

The US abhors the word ‘leftist’ and most of the time gets unnecessarily alarmed if an uprising has even very mild socialist shades. Due to socialist paranoia, the US uses every tool in its arsenal to snub and eliminate the groups with left-wing tendencies. In the end, it helps the religious right to dominate the political discourse. Sometimes the US is able to extend its imperialist reach using the religious right but if this backfires then the US has to deal with enemies like al Qaeda and Taliban.

Both in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US had a good choice to use the remnants of leftist oriented Baath Party and People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, cadres of Khalaq and Parcham socialist parties were willing to work with the US to run the government and counter the mujahideen domination. Ironically, most of the state functionaries were considered to be members or sympathisers of the Afghan socialist parties. They were the only educated group in the country and they were the only one who could run the business of the state. The Bush administration was advised by many to take back the Afghan progressives but the US could not swallow the word ‘ex-socialists’. Therefore, the US chose the perilous path of giving the monopoly of political discourse to the religious right in Afghanistan. Now, the US has to deal with a never-ending war in that country.

The US is always blind to the varying shades of leftist political parties in the developing countries. Most of the time, the leftist rhetoric in the Arab world and South Asia is mere slogan mongering; many leftist groups are far from being like traditional communist parties of Russia, China or Vietnam. In almost every case, the socialists in the developing world are no more radical than the European social democrats. And yet the US perceives them as an emergence of another North Korea and adopts self-defeating strategies.

The fact of the matter is that victories of the socialist parties in South America have not harmed the US economic interests or political power. Even China and Vietnam have become rational and reliable business and global partners of the US. They pose much less a problem to the US than the countries dominated by the religious right. Therefore, the American allergy with the word ‘socialist’ is self-defeating and unwise.

The US should not make the same mistake in the Middle East while facing people’s uprisings that it has made for decades. It should encourage the anti-religious groups, particularly women’s organisations, if it does not want proliferation of al Qaeda and Taliban-type extreme rightist ideologies. Most probably, the US will not heed such advice because it is mentally challenged when it comes to dealing with shades of the Left or socialism.

The writer can be reached at manzurejaz@yahoo.com