»Rough Music«. That is not just the title of Tariq Ali’s new book about the suicide attacks in London last July. »Rough Music« is also what Ali has been deploying against imperial endeavours of every kind for over four decades. Born in Lahore (now in Pakistan) in 1943, this author and filmmaker has been living in London since the early sixties. Ali was not only a leading light in the movement opposed to the Vietnam War: In the aftermath of September 11 2001, he knew how to combine analysis and activism in an effective and relevant way. Since then, in a number of writings, he has sharply criticised the Western recolonialisation of Iraq and the Arab world.¹ Tariq Ali, whose extensive works also include the so-called »Islam Quintet« – four volumes have been published to date² –, has been a co-editor of the »New Left Review« for several years. His next book, »The Dictatorship of Capital«, will be published in March 2006 by Verso.

[b]Christian Höller:[/b] There seems to be a particular kind of amnesia (at least in our Western minds and our public consciousness) about events related to the US-led occupation of Iraq. For instance, the number of civilian casualties remains pretty much unclear, or is maybe even deliberately obscured. There are estimates (like the one on www.iraqbodycount.org, or by certain human rights groups),³ but as General Franks of the U.S. Central Command has expressed it, »We don’t do body counts« – something which is of course not true when it comes to the total number of American soldiers being killed. What do you see as the prime reasons for this crude disregard?

[b]Tariq Ali:[/b] »We don\'t do body-counts« is the voice of Empires past and present: the Belgians in the Congo, the British in Kenya, the French in Algeria, the Germans in Namibia, the US in South America, Japan, Southeast Asia and now Iraq. The phrase refers, of course, to the bodies of those whose countries have been occupied. Untermenschen. The crude racism that underlines most imperial occupations is evident. What is interesting in these »human rights« times, when Western citizens are supposed to be concerned with the loss of all human life, is that there is a casual disregard for the Iraqis who are being killed. The Western media is largely responsible for this with its selective reporting, its silences and its fear of offending the imperial power too much. Even in Germany there has been a sudden and sharp shift in the media – both newspapers (SZ, FAZ) and magazines like Der Spiegel and Die Zeit and the TV stations (including Arte and ZDF), and the space for dissenting voices have almost been completely curtailed. This is in sharp contrast to journals like the New York Review of Books, which has kept up a steady barrage against lies and torture, and the London Review of Books whose coverage of Palestine has been exceptional. Both of these journals continue to defy the global trend.

[b]Höller:[/b] In a recent essay,⁴ you ask (with respect to occupation endeavours in general and the torture at Abu Ghraib prison in particular) if »the citizens of North America have forgotten what happened in South and Central America, Asia, and Africa less than fifty years ago?« Is collective memory loss the result of an overall superiority complex (as you state in that essay), or what could be the more concrete – or perhaps the politically engineered – factors behind it?

[b]Ali:[/b] It is partially the parochialism of US society. It is such a large country that most of its citizens do not have a passport. They see no reason to travel elsewhere. They learn geography when their government invades a new country. Partially, it is also the cultural decline of the mainstream TV channels and the media in general. Globalisation has everywhere produced a narrow culture, but nowhere else as dramatically as in the United States. Despite this, reality often transcends the media bubble, as we can witness in Cindy Sheehan\'s campaign against the war, which wrong-footed the media and the Bush administration. When wars go badly, then there is dissent within the Empire which overrides the lies of politicians and embedded journalists.

[b]Höller:[/b] Before the US occupation started, over eight million people took to the streets all over the world to air their protest against this unjustified and poorly argued endeavour. The governments that were most eager to go to war deliberately ignored and dismissed this protest movement, which was, at least in terms of its sheer size, unprecedented in history. What light does this shed on the democratic process in the very countries that present themselves as the »strongest« (or most violent) defenders of Western democratic values?

[b]Ali:[/b] Alas, the eight million who marched were ignored by an imperial leadership hell-bent on war, but they were also ignored by their representatives in parliament. France and Germany had opposed the war, but jumped on the imperial chariot after the fall of Baghdad, saying that the war was wrong but they could not oppose the occupation! Democracy has become truncated and hollowed-out by neo-liberal economics. All over the world, with the exception of Cuba and Venezuela, neo-liberal norms are in place. Gangster capitalism does not require democracy. It can even become a burden.

[b]Höller:[/b] In your autobiography entitled »Street-Fighting Years«, which has just been re-released in extended form,⁵ you analyse, among other things, the anti-Vietnam protest movement in the sixties. What would you consider the most striking differences between the sixties and today, especially when it comes to the conditions for political dissidence, or a peace movement that could be instrumental in ending a war that is killing thousands of civilians?

[b]Ali:[/b] The movements that arose during the sixties of the last century were situated in an epoch of wars, decolonisation and revolutions. Utopia seemed possible. Today, capitalism has turned the world upside down. This does not mean nothing can be achieved. Latin America shows the opposite, and the conditions for dissidence are still there, but there is a continuing discussion on agency: Which social force will achieve change? It’s an open question. It will be answered in its own time. Meanwhile the struggle continues.

[b]Höller:[/b] A popular leftist slogan of the last couple of years has been to »change the world without taking power«, or in other words, to stage colourful, polymorphous guerrilla-like events in the streets without ever pursuing dissent or protest in institutionalised forms. Do you see any positive prospects for strategies like that?

[b]Ali:[/b] No. I never like that slogan. It was born out of despair and defeats, but was always stupid. The Bolivarian process in Venezuela has made the slogan laughable.

[b]Höller:[/b] In dealing with the developments leading to the current occupation scenario, as well as Western societies haunted by fears of »fundamentalist terrorists«, one of your arguments concerns the relationship of »visible« to »invisible violence«. To put it simply, a kind of structural, global-economic violence on the part of the West has been counteracted by a few spectacular visible acts that have gained an immense degree of media attention. What role do particular kinds of fundamentalisms actually play on both sides of this divide – in contradistinction, for instance, to the view of a generalized »clash of civilizations

[b]Ali:[/b] My argument is not so much related to »invisible violence«. I think the causes of 9/11 and the attacks on Madrid and London are directly related to Western occupation of Muslim lands. Here I agree with the work on this subject being done at the University of Chicago: Robert Pape’s admirable analysis »Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism« (2005).⁶ Pape denies strongly that Islamic ultra-fundamentalism is the root cause of terrorism. He argues that: »The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign – over 95 percent of all the incidents – has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw... Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us. (interview in The American Conservative, July 18, 2005)«⁷

[b]Höller:[/b] The London bombings last July were carried out by second generation immigrants (who are officially not immigrants but British citizens). The threat, so to speak, does not come from »outside«, nor is it effected by a »foreign (evil) force«, but now takes its point of departure from within society. Is the picture of terrorist acts aimed at »Western civilization« somehow changing with events like these?

[b]Ali:[/b] In my new book »Rough Music«⁸ I discuss this question at length. I think it is now widely accepted in Britain that the July 7 attacks were a response to Britain\'s involvement in the Iraq war. Attempts by Blair and his embedded journalists to deny this have backfired.

[b]Höller:[/b] The so-called »war on terror« seems to have engendered some of the very evils that the »coalition of the willing« set out to fight against in the very first place. Concerning the situation in Iraq, a popular argument nowadays goes that there is no way back now, or in other words, that the occupation forces cannot be withdrawn without an even greater catastrophe resulting from this. What would an alternative route to democratisation (of Iraq and other Arab states) look like – one that does not rely on a brutally enforced »liberation«?

[b]Ali:[/b] The situation in Iraq is awful. There is now a near-universal agreement that the Western occupation of Iraq has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, first for the people of Iraq themselves, and secondly for the Western soldiers sent by scoundrel politicians to die in a foreign land. The grammar of deceit utilised by Bush, Blair and sundry neo-con/neo-lib apologists to justify the war has lost all credibility. Despite the embedded journalists and the non-stop propaganda, the bloody images refuse to go away. A savage chaos disfigures the country. On the fringes of the occupying armies, rival militias vie for control. Water and electricity are still sporadically supplied. The hospitals and schools barely function. Iraq under Anglo-Saxon occupation is in a worse state than it was during the previous decade under the sanctions imposed by the West and implemented by the United Nations. The sooner the occupying armies leave, the better.

[b]Höller:[/b] The US-led war on terror has also led to particularly striking developments in the realm of human rights, both in the homeland and abroad, where not only the events at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib stand out, but policies like the so-called »extraordinary rendition program«,⁹ through which terror suspects can be delivered to countries where torture is performed on them (something that US authorities are not allowed to do in the homeland and that they officially deny). Can you comment on this development?

[b]Ali:[/b] Torture is nothing new in the history of 20th-century Empires. The only reason to be surprised is because of the propaganda assault by the West, which has stressed »human rights«. Harold Pinter put it very well in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: »It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn\'t happening. It didn\'t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It\'s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.«¹⁰

[b]Höller:[/b] Coming back to the issue of amnesia, a particular case in question seems to be the aftermath of recent natural disasters. While the hurricane scenarios in the southern USA gained almost undisrupted media attention, an event like the earthquake in northern Pakistan seemed to be gone from public perception after something like two days. In what ways could one speak of »second and third-class victims«, or of a »media racism« when it comes to the victims of natural catastrophes?

[b]Ali:[/b] It’s always the same. In Pakistan, no Westerners were involved or died. The media vultures descend on tragedy, pick the entrails of the dead and wounded with their cameras and then depart. Meanwhile Cuba has over a thousand doctors in the remotest regions of the country and has set up three camp hospitals and is distributing free medicines.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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