Critique internationale - Content
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Christopher Hill, The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy, Basingstoke, Palgrave/MacMillan, 2003, 376 pages.
Poitevin (Guy), The Voice and Will, Subaltern Agency : Forms and Motives, New Delhi, Manohar / Centre de sciences humaines, 2002, 393 pages.
Petito (Fabio), Hatzopoulos (Pavlos) (eds.), Religion in International Relations – The Return from Exile, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, 286 pages.
Balci (Bayram), Missionnaires de l’Islam en Asie centrale. Les écoles turques de Fethullah Gülen, Paris, IFEA-Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003, 301 pages
[The Status of "Asians" in the United States. Reflections of American Identity]
“Asians” were long treated by American law and society as total strangers who were, if not dangerous, at least undesirable. Case law, particularly in the Supreme Court, substantiates the systematic nature of this ostracism. Asian immigration was for a long time discouraged or even simply prohibited. Changes in immigration law and major rulings concerning minorities in the 1960s marked a crucial turning point. In the past few decades, “Asians” have on the contrary often been held up as the hard-working, successful “model minority,” thus more or less explicitly contrasted with Blacks, said not to share this ethic. Such social success (which in fact should be tempered) is thus supposed to prove that discrimination no longer plays a significant role in the prosperity of various racial groups and that only cultural values come into play: a doubtful conclusion.
[The Political Anatomy of a Controversy. South African Democracy Faced with the AIDS Challenge]
There has been a tendency in Europe to oversimplify the controversy raging in South Africa over AIDS, seeing it merely as the irresponsibility of a President professing wild medical theories bordering on the criminal, against which good sense and civil society have rightly protested. An analysis of this debate in fact requires first taking a look at the socio-political realities underlying the various positions and second, going farther back in time to pinpoint more deeply rooted causes of the current tension (in other words, not forgetting apartheid!). The “absurdity” of the hypotheses put forth and the stands taken by certain politicians can then be viewed in a more illuminating context. South African society is without a doubt threatened by the epidemic, but it is not put in jeopardy by the controversy surrounding it: democracy comes out of this storm strengthened.
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[The Impossible Palestinian Strategy of Martyrdom Victimization and Suicide Attacks]
Suicide attacks, initiated in 1994 by the Hamas to thwart the Oslo accords, has reached considerable proportions with the second Intifada. Even elements of the Fath have been won over to this method. Suicide attackers hope through their “martyrdom” to convince the world that Palestinian society is a victim, emphasize the enormous disparity between the forces pitted against one another – which supposedly justifies the use of such an extreme tactic –, claim the two peoples differ in terms of bravery (the Israelis supposedly afraid of losing men, the Palestinians unconcerned by death), and simply “do something” in a situation where any undertaking, not only political, but individual as well, has become virtually impossible. What’s more, the tremendous compartmentalization imposed on Palestinian society by Israeli security measures has helped to spawn little, practically autonomous groups, seriously jeopardizing the chances that cease-fires negotiated by the leaders will last.
[Suicide Attackers in Kashmir: "Martyrs" of a Lost Cause]
In connection with the “Kashmir question,” a wave of suicide attacks has developed since 1993, for which some dozen Jihad militias, in Kashmir itself as well as in Pakistan, recruit young “martyrs” (there are no individually-planned suicide attacks, unlike with the Palestinians). However, the rationale behind “candidates for martyrdom” differs according to the place of recruitment: in Kashmir, the obvious failure of the nationalist struggle explains that young suicide attackers are spurred on by solely personal motives (a close relation to avenge, or simply the feeling that Islamist groups are the only ones that pay attention to them); in Pakistan, it is the failure of the praetorian Islamic nationalist project that inspires these youths to live out the thrill or death wish of adventuring into Kashmiri territory and be crowned with a glorious end.
[Chechnya: The Jihad Re-Territorialized]
From the first Russian-Chechnyan war (1994-1996) to the resumption of the conflict as of 1999, the array of actions used by the Chechnyans has changed. Suicide attacks, strongly imprinted with references to Muslim “martyrdom”, have multiplied. That, however, does not necessarily mean that international Jihad movements have cashed in on the situation. For one, as early as the 19th century, anticolonial movements associated Islam with anticolonialism; secondly, the constant reference to international Jihadism, portraying Chechnya as a place where infidel oppression of Muslims is rampant, only makes sense in the context of the Chechnyan project for national liberation. The notion of Jihad only has meaning for the Chechnyan combatants insofar as it embodies the fight for independence.
[The Particular Path Taken by Islamist Violence in Algeria]
Islamist violence in Algeria has so far been unaffected by suicide attacks. Actually, aspirants to “martyrdom” are characterized by the conviction they are “pure” in a soiled world. But Islamist combatants in Algeria have always defined themselves as “the just,” rather than the “pure,” fighting for change here on earth. The state, likened to the Devil, must be conquered by a guerrilla that enjoys the “people’s” support and be replaced by an Islamic regime. Since the “people” did not meet the guerrilla’s expectations, some groups have reacted by slaughtering civilians, justifying this action by representing their country not as a land of Islam but as a land of Jihad peopled by renegades. This policy has been counterproductive: repression, arming of villagers, disavowal from other Islamist groups... Some Islamic combatants have decided to join international terrorist networks to regain prestige and find a way out of the hole they have dug for themselves.
