Outlawing the FIS has been a colossal blunder. As King Hassan of
Morocco has observed, the FIS can now continue to claim the popular
mandate without ever having to handle the intractable problems that
would make alternatives more attractive. Recognizing this, one of the
FIS' harshest critics, the pseudonymous CIA analyst Edward Shirley,
concedes that "it might be better to sweat out the fundamentalist
fever sooner rather than later" (Foreign Affairs May/June 1995).

By this past spring signs began to appear that even the French had begun to accept that conclusion. Whereas before they attacked American motives in meeting with the Islamists -- much as they once suspected the United States of secretly favoring the FLN -- they now joined Washington in welcoming talks between the FIS and secular opposition parties. Under President Chirac, with Pasqua out and Juppe prime minister, they halted ill-disguised military support. Yet even now there is no question of conditioning French economic aid on the willingness of the military regime to move toward a compromise. Anyone proposing such a policy now would risk being accused of caving in to the FIS' bombing campaign, in addition to precipitating a sudden collapse in Algeria and a massive outflow of refugees. Thus, fear of one day facing the "Who lost Algeria?" question still causes policy paralysis.

True and False Realism

Against this background, what then should America do? It may well be too late for France to escape the full brunt of an Islamist backlash and boatloads of refugees, but we need not all go down with the ship. This would surely be the result of following the advice of analysts like Daniel Pipes, Judith Miller, and Edward Shirley, for whom Algeria is seen as simply a test case of America's ability to take on the Islamist threat. Though they differ on details and none fails to distinguish between Islam as a faith and "Islamic fundamentalists", all agree that the State Department is wrong to engage them in a dialogue, and argue -- as Pipes does in his recent article for The National Interest -- that "there are no moderates."

Yet, as John Esposito shows in his book The Islamic Threat (Oxford University Press, 1992), Americans no less than the French tend to underplay the historical processes and present-day problems that arouse Islamic activists' extremism. More sophisticated writers simply ignore the inconvenient chronology of Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Israel, where fanatical violence followed the frustration of other forms of expression and bloody repression. Others stoop to the most offensive stereotypes, like Shirley, who writes that the Islamists are successful since they offer young Muslim men what they have always wanted, "wealth and women", without the guilt -- a notion that is as incredible as it is inexplicable. Islamists' anger is thus made to appear inescapable -- if not in the blood -- and the reader is invited to conclude that talking to them can only amount to "appeasement."

To complete his portrait of Islamists as "totalitarians" who -- like the communists and fascists before them -- "aspire to universal dominance", Pipes provides a know-your-enemy checklist of their distinguishing features, including "anti-moderate", "anti-democratic", anti-semitic", and "anti-Western." It is, of course, easy enough to "prove" that there is no such thing as moderate Islamic activism by first defining it as anti-moderate. But what Pipes provides is really "a papier-mache model made from snippets of rhetoric, with the diversity and disagreements among Islamists carefully cut away. Rather than engage in an inconclusive exchange of contending quotes, one can cite an array of concrete actions. Iran itself has tilted in favor of the Armenian Christians against the Muslim Azerbaijanis, and has cut back on aid to Sudan. Even Miller found Tourabi and the Shi'ite leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah feuding with their putative ally in Tehran (Foreign Affairs, November/December 1994). All three despise the Saudi Wahhabis -- "anti-moderate" in internal policy but pro-Western in foreign affairs, though they aided Algerian Islamists until just last year. Within Algeria itself, the radically differing positions of the FIS and the "Armed Islamic Group" are reflected by murderous encounters between their partisans -- a relationship that Pipes describes as "a division of labor."

At one point Pipes acknowledges that Islamists differ on tactics and ideology and that some are willing to work through the system and avoid violence, even while he still insists that "every one of them is inherently extremist." Yet even if they are equally extreme, Islamic activists are, for whatever reasons, obviously going their separate ways -- and the most inept diplomacy could exploit their conflicts. Now, as so often in the past, some "realists" are so intent on proving their toughness that they have desensitized themselves to the obvious: Nothing is more likely to make the Islamic revival a united and genuinely dangerous threat than treating it as such.

These analysts agree that America should not talk privately to Islamic activists and ought publicity to oppose the whole idea of political Islam (our Saudi allies notwithstanding). As a guide to our actions, Pipes suggests that we follow the lead of nonactivist Muslims. Yet he could not wish that in the case of Algeria. Last January nearly all of the secular parties, including the Berbers and the FLN, met with the FIS under the auspices of the Catholic Community of Sant'Egidio. They agreed on a set of principles both to end the war and keep the peace, including the proscription of torture and terrorism, and a national conference to organize new elections. While it is impossible to know which way Algerians would now vote, those who have agreed that they ought to have a chance to opt for the FIS represent parties that accounted for nearly 90 percent of all votes cast in the last election. Consequently, they refused to participate in the presidential elections this past November, which therefore proved nothing so much as the government's isolation.

No matter, Miller and Pipes would deny Muslim nations the right to choose their rulers for an indeterminate period while they prove whether they can handle all the rights of a "civil society" -- in effect, "let's see how they do with training wheels." But here again, it is hard to see how this advice fits Algeria. In the period before elections, Algerians responded enthusiastically to political liberalization, forming dozens of parties and staging rallies almost daily, while the airwaves were flooded with outspoken political programming. At the time they enjoyed what Andrew Pierre and William Quandt have described as "one of the freest presses in the Arab world" (Foreign Policy, Summer 1995). Miller concedes that, after having backed repression, for us now to adopt a general policy requiring human rights before free elections would appear "unseemly." In the particular case of Algeria it would appear ridiculous. Even Pipes admits that this "shipwreck of a regime . . . . stand[s] for no ideas or visions; their leaders merely want to stay in power.' But "however corrupt, however nasty", he would still have us support them. How then is a "civil society" -- much less contested elections -- ever to emerge? When he endorses Miller's call for "elections, tomorrow and civil society today", Pipes is in effect putting off the whole problem indefinitely.

Yet to continue to debate the rightness of America's rhetorical position obscures the real issue. Whether America or France condemns or converses with Islamic activists is less important than the fact that both give billions of dollars to regimes that seek to crush them. Even in Algeria the Clinton administration has acquiesced in France's campaign for IMF loans and debt restructuring. The question is not whether we should embrace the Islamists -- no serious analyst argues for that -- but whether it is wise to continue to be accessories to their murder. Make no mistake: as long as we accept and finance "strong-arm tactics" (Pipes again), there is no evading the moral responsibility.

There may be threats so dire and so insidious as to justify abandoning our commitment to democracy, but these analysts have not even made a convincing realpolitik argument. Indeed, rather than genuine realism, their call for what would amount to a crusade against Islamism has the air of an intoxication, not unlike that of their opposite numbers. What is fanaticism, after all, if not letting the pursuit of principles become so blind as to lead us to trample them underfoot? That may explain why a seemingly sober analyst such as Pipes can accept the view that "To fight the fundamentalists one has to have been a bit like them oneself."

Algeria is one case where a truly realist policy is also the right one: We cannot support either the present Algerian regime or its Islamist opponents, but we should continue to talk to both about human rights and fair elections. To make our words carry weight, we must make continuing financial aid to Algeria contingent on progress on these two points while at the same time offering our help in negotiations to end the war. At a bare minimum, we must make clear to the French that we cannot support them in an all-out confrontation with the Algerian Islamists. It is to be hoped that this will be enough to dissuade them, though they may well decide that domestic politics will not permit a change of policy. While it is difficult to foresee the ultimate outcomes our diverging positions in the face of a exodus from a new Islamic state, just a "Scud's throw" away from France, could cause trans-Atlantic ties to snap.