saving muslim women, again

I have an aid-related pet peeve – when someone justifies an argument and/or intervention by making a gesture toward “saving” disempowered Muslim women. This trope has a long history: offenders include French colonials in Algeria and former First Lady Laura Bush before the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Like any humanitarian aid worker (and most others), I think there are compelling reasons to help vulnerable populations. But we also have a responsibility to carefully consider the how and why. We should be particularly vigilant when humanitarian and military goals become intertwined.

This is all a way of saying that my peeve-o-meter hit zone red when I saw Thomas Friedman’s recent column on education in Afghanistan. After saying that he’s not sure the Afghan war makes sense anymore in strategic terms, he finds the silver lining:

But when you see two little Afghan girls crouched on the front steps of their new school, clutching tightly with both arms the notebooks handed to them by a U.S. admiral — as if they were their first dolls — it’s hard to say: “Let’s just walk away.” Not yet.

Friedman is writing about the opening of a school built by Greg Mortenson of “Three Cups of Tea” fame and the US State Department. The opening was attended by Admiral Mike Mullen, the US chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff. It’s a harmonious image of the military, non-governmental organizations and diplomatic forces joining hand-in-hand to empower Afghan girls. Friedman’s image of a commanding officer giving gifts to crouching, clutching Afghan girls feeds the old trope: Western might saves oppressed women from corrupt anti-moderns and religious extremists. He goes one step further to argue that the school reminds us of the essence of the “war on terrorism.”

It’s about the war of ideas within Islam — a war between religious zealots who glorify martyrdom and want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, with its women disempowered, and those who want to embrace modernity, open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men. America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were, in part, an effort to create the space for the Muslim progressives to fight and win so that the real engine of change, something that takes nine months and 21 years to produce — a new generation — can be educated and raised differently.

Let me be clear that I support the education of Afghan children and I admire Mortenson’s work. But that sentiment is exactly what enables the sleight of hand: the Hallmark moment makes us feel good about conflating humanitarian, military and moral missions. Rory Stewart, a professor at Harvard, argues that this conflation prevents us from proposing more minimalist and realistic goals in each realm. Is it really for the West to create the space for an Islamic progressive movement? Friedman argues this was one of the aims of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But, if anything, the wars have reduced the legitimacy and sway of Muslim moderates. Pakistan recently announced its opposition to a surge in Afghanistan because it would push extremists into its own territory. During my fieldwork in Xinjiang, China, many Uyghurs cited the Iraq war as evidence of American hatred of Islam. In my view, they were sad and angry in near equal measure.

It’s a mistake to think that the outcome could have been different if the development budget were a little bigger or the military intelligence a lot better. Regardless, US security interests are not coterminous with the concerns of Muslim progressives, humanitarian organizations or Afghan girls. To treat them as such will lead, at the very best, to disappointment on all sides. Stewart writes:

Indeed, at times it seems that all these activities – building a state, defeating the Taliban, defeating al-Qaida and eliminating poverty – are the same activity. The new US army and marine corps counter-insurgency doctrine sounds like a World Bank policy document, replete with commitments to the rule of law, economic development, governance, state-building and human rights. In Obama’s words, ‘security and humanitarian concerns are all part of one project.’

This policy rests on misleading ideas about moral obligation, our capacity, the strength of our adversaries, the threat posed by Afghanistan, the relations between our different objectives, and the value of a state. Even if the invasion was justified, that does not justify all our subsequent actions. If 9/11 had been planned in training camps in Iraq, we might have felt the war in Iraq was more justified, but our actions would have been no less of a disaster for Iraqis or for ourselves. The power of the US and its allies, and our commitment, knowledge and will, are limited.

To Friedman’s credit, his following piece acknowledges that we have limited time, money, soldiers and aid workers. But he doesn’t yet see that at issue is not only the limit to our will and resources, but to our wisdom as well.