World Tribune.com


A SENSE OF ASIA

Dealing with Islam/Autocrats


See the Sol Sanders Archive

By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Sol W. Sanders

May 16, 2002

When President Bush welcomed Malaysia’s Mohammed Mahathir this week, he again confronted a fundamental problem of the war on terrorism: how to make necessary deals with regimes which do not reflect American values and give the U.S. a bad name among decent people. Mahathir’s Malaysia is not the most difficult – Saudi Arabia is very much in the spotlight. But the very fact that Malaysia-U.S. relations are, in theory, easier to manage but in practice very complex is symptomatic.

The Mahathir visit is supposed to be a kiss-and-make-up session. But given Mahathir’s history, it will not be easy. And it cannot be more than a papering over of fundamental differences that dog U.S. efforts to continue to rally Moslem world allies.

Some of us remember that Mahathir as a young politician was thrown out of the UMNO [Malaysia’s “government” party based on Malay-Chinese-Indian constituent parts] by the first Malaysian Prime Minister Tengku Abdul Rahman because of his vociferous racism, pronouncements not far from “throw the Chinese into the sea”, too often heard in Malaysia’s race riots in the past.

Mahathir, a brilliantly successful politician with a career analogous to Lee Kwan Yu in neighboring Singapore, just will not leave the stage. He is by far the longest living Asian government chief. But the signs of decay are abundant. And when in 1997, a financial crisis swept East Asia threatening the prosperity which its vast raw materials and its aggressive Overseas Chinese entrepreneurial community have brought the little country, Mahathir was at his demagogic worst. He thumbed his nose at Western palliatives. And he sought to appeal to the crudest Asia-for-Asians theme, proposing the Japanese set up a yen bloc. There were some echoes in Japan – but already in the throes of its worst postwar crisis, and always reluctant to become the principle donor in a new regional bloc, Tokyo turned him down [with a little nudging from Washington].

Mahathir dug in his heels, refused to make any concessions he and other Malay leaders had built with their crony regime. Although foreign investment has pretty much dried up and there is a lot of belt-tightening in the high tech industry he sought as Malaysia’s road to the future, things have gone better for Kuala Lumpur than generally predicted.

Feeling his oats, Mahathir turned on his designated heir apparent, former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, with trumped up charges all the way from sexual promiscuity to embezzlement. It was to Anwar and his coterie of younger Malay politicians whom the U.S. – and reformist circles in Malaysia – had looked for a new era. Mahathir also began beating the Islamic chauvinist drums – frightened by the growing strength of PAS. PAS already controls two Malaysian state governments despite everything the UMNO could throw at it. And only the backing away of the predominantly Chinese party, DAP, from an alliance with the PAS has removed the national electoral threat to his government. PAS insisted on sticking to their goal of making sharia [Islamic law]the country’s legal code.

The danger in Malaysia, one reflected throughout the Moslem world, is that the Islamicsts – whether in Algeria or on the West Bank – in addition to their advocacy of a militant Islam become the only politicians bringing some sense of reform through their highly developed social programs. To the extent that Washington is identified with the Algerian military regime, Yasser Arafta’s PLO, or Mahathir’s creaking UMNO, American policy risks becoming synonymous with corrupt autocratic governments which dominate the Islamic world. But the experience of Iran and Algeria makes a political alliance with Islamcists chancy at best.

The new element in the situation, of course, is the worldwide terrorist outbreak. Mahathir was quick to rationalize 9/11. He has been a fervent supporter of radical Islam outside his own country and denounced the U.S. action in Afghanistan. But the discovery of network allied to Al Qaida with plans to attack American targets in Singapore but based in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, brought him up short. Mahathir quickly began coordinating his anti-terrorist operations with Washington who tipped off the Southeast Asians to the plot about which they were unaware after the discovery of documents in Afghanistan.

Mahathir is still a reluctant ally. He announced in the Malay-language newspapers before his departure that he would stick by his positions in Washington – including strong support for the Palestinians and anti-Israeli pronouncements [unlike Singapore where military cooperation with Jerusalem is longstanding].

But, ultimately, as the cry for reform grows in Malaysia, either Mahathir will have to go to be replaced by younger, more modernist elements, or the Islamicist threat will grow – and the U.S, again, will find itself with the alternatives of a corrupt, inefficient regime seen as the enemy of reform or obscurantist Islam.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@directvinternet.com ), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

May 16, 2002

See current edition of

Return to World Tribune.com Front Cover
Your window on the world

Contact World Tribune.com at world@worldtribune.com