 "Noah Feldman")
The rise of Islamic terror groups such as the Islamic State or (ISIS) in West Asia has caught governments unaware on how to tackle their spread. Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor who is considered an expert on constitutional and international law, during a recent visit to India, spoke to Bibhu Ranjan Mishra and Raghu Krishnan on what is giving rise to elements such as the ISIS and if there are possible solutions to tackle this menace. Edited excerpts:
How has the US handled the situation in West Asia?
In the last 50 years, historians who assess such developments would ask two things: why was the US focused on West Asia when the rise of China was the big geopolitical thing during the same period? The second, was it their intention to destabilise the region? On the second question, it is hard to say if the net effect has been positive. The Arab Spring, in some ways, was caused by the destabilisation.
Have the positive things that came out of the Arab Spring been wasted?
Only in Tunisia, which is one bright spot, can you say that the Arab spring led to a functioning democracy in a majority Muslim state. Important as it is, the impact is only on 10 million people, only a little bigger than Bangalore. Given that the Arab spring was led by people themselves, it's not surprising that the US destabilising that came from outside also did not generate effective results.
Has the US learnt from its mistake?
The US public doesn't want to send ground troops to a West Asian country. So, they send drones and planes. Before the bombing of Libya, if you had asked me, what can you say with confidence about US politics? I would have said we will not remove the dictator of another West Asian state. But we did it in Libya, and Libya is very close to a state of anarchy. The US is sending air strikes through drones and manned aircraft, but it is not sending ground troops. Meanwhile, the irony is the ISIS will not respond except to ground troops. It seems that they cannot be removed through aerial attacks. Have we learnt the right lessons? It doesn't seem like it.
After the Paris attacks, there were air attacks on IS targets in the Syria. What is your view on the developments there?
The ISIS is exploiting the vacuum in political and military power. When there is a vacuum, they step in. It is true in Iraq, Libya; it might be true in Afghanistan. The only way you can resolve that is fill the vacuum. None of the countries around Islamic State-controlled area likes ISIS, but they don't have sufficient incentive to take the risk of committing ground troops to eliminate them. As long as they have more to lose by intervening than by allowing it to remain in place, there is nothing to stop it.
We are seeing lots of youngsters in Europe joining IS?
Why do some young Muslims find IS attractive. Think of the analogy. After the Fidel Castro-led Cuban revolution, many young, left-leaning people across the world saw a Utopian experiment being tried and they wanted to go and participate in that. That is what is happening among the people who are going to join IS. It is a human desire to affect the outcome of the world. Some people want to be those agents. For this to happen, it was necessary for Islamic State to control territory. The reason Al Qaeda did not get so many supporters, because the basic objective was to go fight and die. One can say that even the ISIS is killing people. So there is an old expression - you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Every movement around the world, unless it's a truly non-violent movement, that there are some collateral costs. So these people are not focused on the killing, they are focused on the constructive building, but in the process they are willing to kill to get there.
You are one among those who drafted the Iraqi constitution. What is your observation of Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code, in India?
It is a common feature of Constitutions around the world that there are one or two issues that are too difficult to resolve. What usually happens is that the drafters of the Constitution do something what in America football we call 'punting'. In softball or football, you kick the ball all the way to the other end of the field and push the issue away from here. That is what we call Constitutional strategy. So almost every Constitution has one - the US Constitution had a punt for slavery. For eighty years it worked but failed when the US had a civil war about it. So, Jammu & Kashmir is a perfect example if I use that as my example to show that you have a great constitution but even then there are some issues which are too hard to resolve. So in that case, what you do is to use some vague term called 'special status'; it does not really mean anything. Now how does the punt really get resolved? It entirely depends on having the right political circumstances when you can generate agreement about it. In the present times, a lot of things are being spoken about the freedom on Internet. Do you think Internet can also be governed through a constitution?
That's a fascinating and deep question. I think that the Internet can't factually have a constitution of its own other than the actual regulators in each country. Because we can't, through the internet, coerce people to take a certain course of action. So let's say America wants to regulate speech - say hate speech on internet - who is going to enforce it?
There is a huge debate on Facebook's Free Basics campaign in India now. What's your take on that?
These are all examples of no matter how powerful the corporation is, and no matter how much they attract by offering free software or hardware, there is no substitute for state regulation. In China, the government still regulates the internet. 10 years ago, that was not impossible. People were under the belief that internet will never work if people don't have free access. If you look at China, the internet works there even though people don't have free access. It's not that it is too difficult to get a virtual private network (VPN) in China to use internet, but most people don't do that. So that shows you the power of the state in a situation. If there is a political fight if Facebook be allowed with its platform, in the end Indian government will answer that question.
