Interview with Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Zeyno Baran

One of the world’s leading experts on Islamist movements, Eurasian-U.S. policies and energy security, Zeyno Baran is the director of the Center for Eurasian Policy and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

Baran’s interests are a good match for the institute, which calls itself “a non-partisan, policy research organization dedicated to innovative research and analysis that promotes global security, prosperity and freedom.” She is also a prolific writer and speaker who has testified in front of the U.S. Congress and presented papers at many conferences.

Baran testified last year before the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee about the various gas and oil pipelines that might be built between Europe and Central Asia. In an interview with the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review, she spoke about the Nabucco project, a planned natural-gas pipeline for which an agreement has just been signed between Turkey and the European Union.

“This agreement is clearly an important milestone, but there is still a lot to do. I believe there is sufficient gas to make Nabucco happen – without Iranian or Russian gas. I also believe the project makes commercial sense,” Baran said. “However, I am still not sure if there is the necessary political will on the side of the Europeans, especially those who have close commercial and political relations with Russia, to take the next steps.”

Baran said she believes that neither the Kremlin nor Russian gas giant Gazprom want to lose their monopoly power over Central Asian gas, and consider any attempt at diversification as anti-Russian. “This is, of course, ridiculous, but unfortunately many in Europe – and even some in the U.S. – have bought into this logic,” she said. “That said, I am glad to see continued, and increased, U.S. attention and support for this project as a way to help Europe diversify its supply routes and sources, which would in turn lead to reduced Russian influence on countries’ political and economic decisions.”

Islamist movements

The 37-year-old Baran has also specialized in Islamist movements, a subject of great significance in today’s world – perhaps nowhere more so than in Turkey.

“Since the end of the caliphate and the abolition of the shariah legal code in 1924, Turkey has always been the ultimate prize for the Islamist movements. Returning Turkey to some form of Islamic rule is a long-term goal for the global Islamist movement; I don’t think they’ll ever give it up,” she said. “That said, Turkish institutions are strong, and Turkish society is very conscious of the difference between life under secular and democratic rule and life under Islamist rule.”

In the past, Baran has written about Hizb ut-Tahrir, or HT, a pan-Islamist political party with a Marxist-Leninist-derived ideology. Though the group rarely, if ever, makes the headlines, she considers HT to be “one of the smartest and most successful” Islamist movements. “It is due to its work over many decades that we now have the concept of a political ummah [or unified Muslim world] and a worldwide caliphate,” she said. “HT is not a spiritual or even a religious movement, but a political one with the aim of overthrowing the current world order.”

After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the antiterrorism laws passed in the West, the group has become “much more careful in its public discourse,” Baran said, but noted that it continues to gain a presence in many countries’ militaries and intelligence services, announcing several years ago that it has members in the Pakistani and Turkish armies.

Baran believes that HT has “benefited greatly from the Western focus on terrorism; since it is not itself conducting terror activities, HT is still not considered to be a real threat.” However, she said, the Western world has made some changes in its approach to the group. While the U.K. government had previously tolerated HT’s establishing an operations center in the country, for example, after the July 7, 2005, suicide-bomb attacks on London's public transport system, they “finally began to understand how Islamist ideology could lead to both terrorism and various social-cohesion problems.” However, she noted, British leaders have “yet to take any clear or decisive action against HT. The situation is worse in the U.S., where there has been denial that the group is even present in the country.”

One could ask the same question about the Muslim Brotherhood, or MB, another Islamist group that is highly visible in Egypt and other Middle East countries, but seems to be ignored in Turkey in spite of its activities there. Baran believes this is because “few people really follow the MB and its global activities, how it keeps transforming itself, and what it is doing in Turkey. It has been quite a surprise to me how little media coverage there has been of the various MB gatherings that take place in Turkey.”

Comparing the two groups, she said: “Frankly, I have more respect toward HT, because it says openly that it opposes democracy, so you know where it stands. MB, on the other hand, pretends to like democracy these days, as it has become the easiest way for it to come to power. I consider it to be the most treacherous group, as it has managed to fool many in the West who support it as a potential ‘antidote’ to terrorism.”

Baran believes that supporting non-violent Islamists as a way to fight terrorists is “a terribly wrong and dangerous strategy” that been tried unsuccessfully many times. “Each time, it backfires. Still, the West keeps repeating it, hoping that ‘this time will be different,’” she said. “But as Einstein said, ‘We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.’”

Baran likewise has strong words about America’s lack of knowledge about Islam and Muslims, including Islamist movements in Turkey, the Middle East and the Caucasus, and says Saudi influence has been the most crucial factor in shaping American policymakers’ understanding, or lack thereof, of Islam. Saudi Arabia has supplied religious books, Koran translations, imams, and scholars to the United States for decades, she said, a practice that has created an understanding of Islam very different from the mainstream understanding in other parts of the world. “For example, the main issue one hears about when it comes to women is the right to wear the headscarf; as if their right to education, equality and overall dignity, as well as their right not to be sexually and otherwise abused, are not part of Islam,” she said.

Today’s problems

Baran also addressed two recent issues that have caught the world’s attention – the unrest among the Uighur population in China and the fallout from the Iranian election. “I think given China’s international position, many countries will continue their silence. In the long term, however, wounds that remain unhealed will start to bleed again,” she said. “It is, of course, amazing hypocrisy to see so many so-called Islamic countries and movements raise all hell when there is an Israeli attack on Hamas, yet remain totally silent when there is a Chinese attack on Muslims. I wish people would stop and think about why this might be the case.”

Baran also expressed her dismay that Turkish leaders were among the first to congratulate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying, “I am sure Iranians who dream of a different regime and were willing to risk their lives for it will not forget [this].”

Though Baran believes that the much-publicized killing of Neda Agha-Soltan will “forever be remembered as the beginning of the end of this regime,” she cautioned that change would not come quickly. “All I am saying is that there has been a fundamental change in how Iranians see the regime, and how the world sees it, in light of the post-election events,” she said. “For Turkey, the real test will come when the West and the Arab world eventually decide to take firm action against the Iranian regime: Will Ankara join its allies, or instead try to maintain good neighborly relations with Iran?”

It may seem strange to compare a modern intellectual like Baran with Cassandra of ancient Troy, whose prophecies of catastrophe were ignored, but she has predicted the conflict that took place in Uzbekistan over the U.S. presence there, and, later, and more problematically, the possibility of a military coup in Turkey in 2009.

“I too have predicted some future events, not all of them negative, and was to a large degree ignored or ridiculed,” Baran said. “In other cases, however, I may have prevented some more unfortunate events from materializing by voicing the possibilities. Sometimes our simple awareness of dynamics changes them entirely.”

In both her work and her personal life, Baran said she tends to think about alternative futures based on current events. “If one is able to think analytically and in a detached, unbiased manner, sometimes it is easy to see where our actions today will lead us in the future,” she said. “We can then decide to change that future by changing what we are doing today, or we can choose to ignore reality and then be shocked when that predicted future is indeed upon us.”

In addition to her ongoing projects about Eurasian geopolitics and energy, Baran said she is “quite concerned” about the possibility of a second war in Georgia later in summer. She has also just finished editing a book called “The Other Muslims” for release in February 2010 and is working on another dealing with various religions and belief systems.

Baran said she has also recently begun a project with two Dutch investigators who published a book on the possibility of former Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme having been murdered by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. “Sweden just took over the EU presidency, and as you know, the EU still does not consider the PKK a terrorist organization and has, in general, ignored crimes and murders committed by the PKK on European territory,” she said. “I know there have been many theories about the Palme murder, and I am not sure what the truth is, but I think this is an interesting one that might hopefully lead to more soul-searching among those who have been affiliated with the PKK.”