Daily Times

One tried and tested rule of chess is that sometimes the ‘ghost’ of a move is more powerful than the move itself. Sometimes, you don’t actually have to move the knight or bishop to a central square or a rook at an open file; just the threat of moving the piece there is enough to extract a reaction from the opponent.

That, to an extent, seems the rationale behind the house arrest of Hafiz Saeed the other day. Apparently, the US State Department gave the Pakistani government just a one-liner. Arrest the guy and ban the organisation or wake up tomorrow morning with fresh sanctions. And, in case you haven’t noticed, the new White House is not shying away from putting its muscle where its mouth is when it comes to dealing with Muslims and Muslim countries.

So, Trump has spent the first two weeks in office with plenty of ‘Islam’ on the agenda. Interestingly, the fiercest reaction to his so-called Muslim ban has come from within the United States, and much of Europe. Not a peep came out of heads of Muslim states. Until the time of writing, Trump had had phone calls with two Muslim rulers — the Saudi King and the Egyptian President — and neither even mentioned the Muslim ban.

Another interesting feature of the ban is that it, for the moment at least, completely sidesteps countries that have been known to sponsor, fund and arm terrorists across the globe, and whose nationals were involved in 9/11. All it is most likely to do is harm working class individuals fleeing the disasters of their own worlds to the safety and better prospects of the American Dream.

If Trump, or any of his senior advisors, had taken the trouble of studying the enemy he’s trying to destroy — Islamic terrorism — this ban is the last thing they would have enforced or even suggested. One of al-Qaeda’s foremost ideologues, Abu Musab al-Suri, who knit together the organisation’s firebrand ideology and action plan, sought foremost to provoke large-scale Muslim rejection in the West, particularly America. When the more decent Muslims living and benefitting from the west are embittered, the ranks of the extremists already engaged in battle with the superpower will naturally swell. How ironic that after more than a decade of bloody war, in differing forms in different parts of the world, a new White House has presented the ideal gift to Islamist extremists on a golden platter.

Already many stories have come up of the ban affecting regular working class Muslim Americans, most of who are stranded at airports and denied entry into America. To rightly gauge the spillover of this radical move it will be more important to watch European capitals than Muslim governments, unfortunately. The British are already facing a dilemma. Public resentment to Trump’s upcoming visit is snowballing, putting the government in a very difficult position after the prime minister just promised to beef up the ‘special relationship’ in Washington.

Analysts harking back to the million men march at the time of the Iraq war, which Tony Blair fought off smartly, are mistaken. This is a very different sort of public disenfranchisement. If countries like Canada, with the sizeable Muslim population, can take a stand despite their own special relationships, the British people are asking why their government can’t.

Bigger worries are brewing in Berlin. Angela Merkel, who welcomed Muslim refugees when everyone including much of the Muslim world turned them out, has just been dubbed the new leader of the free world even as she battles for her own political survival. Europe’s own sharp tilt to the right is not leaving Germany unaffected, and Merkel’s humanism in welcoming the refugees, and its unfortunate spillover, is tightening the noose around her neck as well.

Soon Trump will, as promised, put the squeeze on NATO; asking for hard payments which will surely induce a cash flow bottleneck and send the organisation into paralysis. And then there’s Trump’s embrace of Russia, with its own fallout for the NATO alliance. When this friction plays out in the backdrop of the ridiculous Muslim ban, which is causing unforeseen and unprecedented diplomatic headwinds, international politics is likely to be dominated with the confrontation of epic proportions.

Strangely, while much of the western world is making its position clear, the Muslim community is still hushed up — save the odd but expected yes-mans of the Gulf, of course. It is up to the more progressive of Muslim countries to take the lead in these developments before the chips start falling into undesirable places. Yet countries like Pakistan and Turkey, who have great stakes in their respective equations with America, are nowhere near considering a united front of sorts.

Both are central to core US objectives in their areas of influence, so both must take the initiative before Washington puts its own plans into irreversible action. Turkey is crucial in the fight against ISIS in Syria. For so long it has played the wrong side, just like the Americans. But now, with the war for once end-able, there is urgent need to find common ground.

Similarly, everybody knows Pakistan holds the key to the Afghan endgame. If one thing is for sure, it’s that our policy of ambiguity that has dominated our narrative about the Afghan opposition — which confounded the Bush and Obama administrations — will hit a brick wall with Trump’s no-nonsense, businessman approach. And it is in our own interest to clean our stables before anyone else feels the need to make a phone call. But Washington will call, and sooner rather than later, so the more homework is done before hand, the better. Also, it wouldn’t hurt if Islamabad, Ankara, and a few other Muslim capitals made some phone calls among them before they exchange notes with the Americans.

The writer is the Resident Editor, Daily Times Lahore, tweets @yourafiq and can be reached at yourafiq@gmail.com