Islamic Nationalism and State Failure: A Comparison of Social Movements in Afghanistan and Somalia

Activity: Public Seminar

Speakers: Ms. Ayesha Ahmad, IPS associate and Phd scholar from McGill University, Canada.

Chair: Rustam Shah Mohmand, Former High Commissioner of Pakistan to Afghanistan.

A seminar on “Islamic Nationalism and State Failure: A Comparison of Social Movements in Afghanistan and Somalia” was organized on June 10, 2009. Ms. Ayesha Ahmad, an IPS associate and Phd scholar from McGill University, Canada, was the main speaker while former ambassador Rustam Shah Mohmand chaired the session. A research article on the topic at hand has been published in Policy Perspectives, Volume 6, Number 2.

Opening the session Khalid Rahman Director General IPS maintained the two examples could help policy makers as well as scholars understand “the dynamics, implications and possible outcomes of Islamic movements in a pre-dominantly Muslim society.”

Ms Aisha Ahmad said that both the Taliban movement in Afghanistan and Islamic Courts Union (ICU) movement in Somalia were originally responses to local problems posed by chaos and poor governance with local motives and limited agenda but the foreign intervention turned the things from bad to worse.

She maintained the US policy of treating Taliban and Al-Qaeda as a single entity in its post-9/11 strategy and presuming ICU as another manifestation of Al-Qaeda in another part of the world was “over-simplification of a rather complex situation” and labeling ICU as ‘Somali Taliban’ instead of an indigenous movement had “caused huge disaster, not only to the respective regions but to the world at large”, she added.

Ms Ahmed underscored that presence of foreign fighters in Somalia as well as in Afghanistan had increased after foreign intervention instead of decreasing. “This apparently indicates the reverse outcome that the US wanted to achieve”, she analyzed. She recommended that global citizens should try hard to ensure that important policy decisions were devised in the light of deep analyses and sufficient information.”

Chairman of the seminar Rustam Shah Mohmand recalled that emergence of Taliban in Afghanistan as well as that of ICU in Somalia brought peace and order to their war-torn and rogue societies with their character and commitment. “Had there been no foreign intervention, the two movements could have taken their due course to stabilize their respective societies, despite mistakes made by and shortcomings found in these movements and their leadership,” he argued.