Western-Islamist talks counter confrontation trend
Informal meetings aim to reveal common ground on core values

By Rami G. Khouri
Daily Star staff
Friday, March 25, 2005

BEIRUT: While mutual threats and accusations define much of the public interaction between the United States and Hizbullah and Hamas, another kind of interaction under way was manifested most recently in a two-day meeting in Beirut this week.
Smaller groups of American and British experts, including retired former intelligence and other officials, are quietly meeting with Hizbullah, Hamas and other leading Middle Eastern Islamists to probe each other's perceptions, positions and goals. In the process, according to participants in the Beirut gathering, they may be identifying a tantalizing middle ground of democratic reform, where Islamists and the West seem to share core values. One day, they might move toward political processes to give those values life and meaning, judging by some sentiments expressed by participants at these novel meetings.

The informal meetings at a Beirut hotel, organized by the new London-based non-governmental organization Conflicts Forum, brought together a dozen American and British private citizens who remain well connected with government circles and a dozen leading representatives from Hamas, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistan's Jamaa Islamiyya, along with a few individuals from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and other Muslim societies. Hamas participants include Moussa Abu Marzouq, Sami Khater and Osama Hamdan, and Hizbullah was represented primarily by Nawaf Mousawi, head of international relations for Hizbullah.

"We launched this effort in order to open communications among groups and societies that are not in touch with one another, aiming to try and shift prevailing Western perceptions on the Islamist movements and what they represent," Conflicts Forum director Alastair Crooke said in an interview here after the meetings.

His professional experience includes most recently a stint as assistant to the European Union's foreign policy chief, and many years with British intelligence agencies.

"Some Western governments can become prisoners of their own rhetoric and cannot break out of the cycle of hostility with Islamist groups, at a moment when many mainstream Islamists are actively involved in political activity, and are very legitimate and often leading groups in their own societies," he added.

The informal dialogue, according to Arab, American and British participants, focused on several broad themes: Muslims' fears of hegemonic American aims in the region, the centrality to other aspects of Islamic-Western relations of resolving the Palestine issue fairly, the importance of achieving truly open and democratic societies in the Arab-Islamic world and the urgency of achieving an honest meeting of minds on the nature and form of democracy in the Arab-Islamic region.

"While the Western participants were keen to find out about Hizbullah's ties to Iran and future policies toward Israel," a Saudi participant said in an interview, "the Islamists themselves seemed more interested in affirming their desire to participate fully in democratic societies in their countries - but on the condition that they could contest political power on an equal footing with others in society. They do not want to be excluded from the political process, as they are now in many countries."

A common theme throughout the discussion, according to participants, was the strategic challenge facing Islamist groups who are demonized by the U.S. and others in the West, but who are often lionized in their own societies and seek to engage in domestic democratic politics.

"The Islamists are very aware of the challenge they face in transforming themselves, now or in the future, from resistance or liberation organizations into political groups, especially Hamas in Palestine," Crooke said.

He added: "Many of us who know these societies think that Western powers are wrong to demonize and isolate Islamists based on misunderstanding their legitimate roles and status in their own societies. The issues of use of violence and accusations of terrorism must be addressed, of course, but front-loading the process by demanding that groups be disarmed before anything else can happen is likely to fail, as has happened in many other countries around the world."

Arab and Western participants repeatedly noted the Islamists' unambiguous emphasis on the importance of elections, constitutionalism, pluralism, democracy and reform in their societies. At the same time, these Islamist groups derive their legitimacy from their status as liberation and resistance groups that challenge American "hegemony," Israeli occupation and homegrown Arab or Asian corruption and abuse of power by local elites supported by the West.

Bridging this important gap is a challenge for Islamists and Western powers alike, but it is becoming increasingly contradictory in cases where Islamists come to power through democratic elections. In Palestine, Pakistan and Lebanon, for example, Islamist parties have won important elections at the local or national level, though they are often boycotted by Washington because of allegations that they engage in terror.

Graham Fuller, a retired Central Intelligence Agency Middle East analyst, and now a respected writer on Middle Eastern and Islamic issues and a participant in the Beirut meetings, noted that the American government and Islamist movements ironically both seem to be pushing for democratic reform in the Middle East, while Arab leaders who are friends of the U.S. seem to be the ones stalling the change.

"It would be an act of great will and self-confidence for the United States to stand by its principles and really push for open, inclusive democracies in this region," he said. "If Islamists legitimately emerge as the main beneficiaries of democratic systems, the priority should be to start integrating Islamists into Parliaments so that they get used to sharing and exercising power. Ultimately they will be held accountable by their own people."

He pointed to Turkey as an important example of the first Islamist government ever to be freely elected by its own citizens in a predominantly Muslim society. Their performance in power should be the criterion by which to judge Islamists in authority.

"In a truly democratic system, anyone in power will have to respond to public opinion pressures and citizens holding them accountable. New ruling parties always mature with time, when they have to make compromises and work with political and economic realities," he said. Conflicts Forum plans to follow up the Beirut meetings with others here and in Pakistan, allowing private citizens in the West and Islamist officials to exchange views and more accurately know each other's real positions and aims. This sort of exercise also identifies middle ground where their values overlap, and, consequently, where their interests might also coincide one day in terms of official policies.

"The mere fact that such meetings take place is important, because it keeps communication channels open between societies and groups that are not speaking with each other very much, at a time when there is widespread concern in both societies about the violent and confrontational direction in which actual events are moving," Crooke said.

"These are not negotiations," he emphasized, "but rather a process of people-to-people engagement. The participants do not come here to legitimize the other side, but to listen and talk, and perhaps anticipate that through better understanding there can result a change in mutual expectations."

Fuller similarly said that such encounters are important because they show where fruitful dialogue can occur among private citizens, so that one day governments might pick up the thread.

The Lebanese political analyst and director of political programs at Hizbullah's Al-Manar Television, Ibrahim Mousawi, who attended part of the meetings, said that the participating Islamists seemed to welcome the gathering as a breakthrough.

"Anything that brings the two sides together for face-to-face meetings is welcomed, because it lets people really know what the other side is thinking," he said.

He added that such encounters help overcome constraints stemming from the fact that Hizbullah, Hamas and other Islamist positions are heavily presented to the West through pro-Israeli eyes, which distort or ignore some of these groups' key positions.