-Hi, I’m Martin Rust, I’m with the Security and Policy Institute of Professional
Development, here, at the University of Ottawa. My guest today is Kamran Bokhari.
Kamran is the advisor to Stratfor on the Middle East and South Asia, and author of
"Political Islam in the Age of Democratization". We’ve been talking about ISIS and
global terrorism and Canada’s response to that. I want to shift our focus a little bit,
although it’s related, to Saudi and Iran. And although events in the media have been
portrayed as heating up very quickly and very recently, clearly this conflict is very old
and matters a great deal to the stability of the regions and indeed, to our own stability.
Can you comment on those two areas?
-Absolutely. I think that what we don’t really recognize is how, you know … we talked
about the rise of the Shia. There’s been much talk …
-… about the rise of the Shia. Vali Nasr of Johns Hopkins wrote a book on it. There
was … you know, talk about the rise of the Shia
crescent on the northern rim of the Middle East by King Abdullah of Jordan, but I think
that what is not really understood is the magnitude of the problem and how it is being
perceived by players in the regions, this rise
of Iran and the Shia.
-Mmh.
-For the first time in, you know, in 500 years, a Persian Shia power has arisen that has
essentially, you know, blocked the main Sunni power in the region, i.e. Turkey.
-Mm-mm.
-Turkey can’t act in the Middle East because Iran is in its path, both in Syria and Iraq.
-Mm-mm.
-The Saudis are reacting, though they’re trying to take up the leadership and they’ve
really, you know, surprised a lot of people by, you know, picking up a lot of their … you
know, the responsibility of security in the region, lately, with the intervention in Yemen.
But I think that what … this is a process that’s going to really reshape the region
because it takes place in a context when the Arab
world is experiencing an autocratic meltdown …
-Mmh.
-… regimes are collapsing …
-Mm-mm.
-… and the rise of jihadism, because jihadism finds new space to operate in.
-Do you want to talk about …more about that. Jihadism is filling that gap, the gap that
is left in the absence … or in the wake of
the collapsed regimes and it relates to the Arab
springs as well.
-Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the democratization, you know, perhaps, you know, a
100 years from now, people will look back and say: "Well, it was all part of the region’s",
you know, "transformation towards more democratic representative forms of rule." But in
the here and now, in the short term …
-Yeah.
-… we’re looking at chaos and crises. You know, the world … or the region that
we call Middle East is not what it used to be, is
really rapidly reshaping itself. You have …
-Mm-mm.
-… lots of ungoverned spaces. When regimes collapse and on top of that, you have the
Saudis trying to fight the rise of the Shia, that creates fertile ground for groups like
ISIS and Al Qaeda. Why? Because, you know, one
of the strategic dilemma that Saudis have, and the Sunnis in general have, is: how do
you fight Shia and not empower jihadists in the process?
-Mm-mm.
-Because in a sectarian battlefield, you will find that those with most zeal, such as Salafist
militias, jihadists, there are the ones who are most eager to fight Iran and in that
battlefield, you know, you can’t control that. So, you lose control of that battlefield
to militias.
-This conflict is not going away. And it strikes me that there are no quick or easy
solutions. What is the future of ISIS in this conflict?
-There is no endgame so, that’s the problem. We use to think about Al Qaeda. We were
fixated on it for a decade.
-Mm-mm.
-We missed the Arab spring. Now, we have ISIS. You know, down the road, ISIS may
wither away, metamorph- … transform into something different. We’ll call it something
different. It’ll call itself something different. We don’t know, but the essence of non-
state actors trying to create medieval polities, be emirates, caliphates …
-Mm-mm.
-…we’re going to be dealing with that for, you know, many generations to come because,
there are very few arrestors in the path of such forces and what is aggravating the
situation is the clash between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
-Very few arrestors in the path of such forces. These are issues that we’re going to have
to deal with for a very very long time to come.
I’m Martin Rust, I’m at the Security and Policy Institute of Professional Development,
here, at the University of Ottawa. My guest today is Kamran Bokhari, advisor to Stratfor
on the Middle East and South Asia, and author of the book "Political Islam in the
Age of Democratization". Thank you, Kamran.