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Nawaz Wins: What’s Next in Pakistan?

 By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The count’s still contested here and there—and loudly, especially in Karachi, which is no surprise. But the outcome is clear: the Pakistan Muslim League (N) won enough seats in last week’s parliamentary election to form a government all by itself. No need for coalition building in Islamabad.

That’s good. One-party government makes it easier to get things done, especially when there’s a responsible opposition to temper ideological excesses. Such an opposition the out-going People’s Party, whose lackluster performance in power made electoral defeat inevitable, has pledged itself to be.  Even so, the PPP won slightly more seats in Parliament than the perky new kid on the block, the Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice Party) founded by ex-cricketeer Imran Khan, which had hoped to win a parliamentary majority.  The U.S. should be happy.  Khan has been very critical of Pakistan's relations with the U.S.

A Milestone

Before we start looking toward the future via a rather murky crystal ball, let’s pause to note an important milestone. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the 2013 election will allow a civilian-led government to hand the baton to another civilian government. U. S. President Barack Obama has already congratulated PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, and maybe this time—having been granted a third go as Pakistan’s Prime Minister—Nawaz will manage to complete a term in office. In 1999, Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf, with whom Nawaz had just waged (and lost) a high-altitude, mid-winter, mini-war against India, staged a coup and sent him scampering into exile in Saudi Arabia.

A New Nawaz?

“I’ve mellowed.” So says Nawaz, but the world around him may have changed more than he has. To name just a few of the more dramatic events of the past decade or so: the Twin Towers catastrophe in New York; U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq; the rise of drone warfare; the elimination of Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein; the Arab spring and its messy aftermath; the still raging civil war in Syria; the earth-shaking awakening of the Chinese dragon; the death of Kim Jung Il.There's more, but the point has been made.

A New Military?

Nawaz also faces a different Chief of Army Staff.

Many times during the lead up to last  Saturday’s polling, I thought that the level of election-related violence—car bombs set off; candidates, party officials and ordinary people murdered; a high-level kidnapping—must surely have reached coup level. The Army would step in, declaring with the usual paternalistic panache that poor old Pakistan still isn’t ready for democracy. It didn’t happen.

Perhaps the Pakistani military under General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has also mellowed. At the very least, Kayani honored his pledge (or inclination) to keep the Army out of the electoral process, even if that meant the Pakistani Taliban’s selective violence might skew the results toward parties they gauged to be more sympathetic to the Islamist cause. Taliban targets tended to belong to the MQM, the PPP and the AWP, all openly secular in orientation.  An interesting note: the PML-N insists that it too was harrassed, as if Nawaz feels some need to show there's air and light between him and the Taliban.  Even more important: Taliban threats notwithstanding, people in most constituencies flocked to the polls to exercise their right to vote.

Double Standards: Buddhists, Muslims and Murder

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Buddhist mobs have been killing Muslims in Myanmar. Where’s the outrage? Why aren’t all major Buddhist leaders, those supposed paragons of compassion, loudly, unequivocally, calling for a halt to it? Why aren’t Buddhist practitioners world wide wringing their hands with guilt? Buddhists are expected to hate the very idea of swatting a mere mosquito. Aren’t Muslims sentient beings?

Evidently, given what’s expected of all Muslims whenever a single Muslim commits an atrocity, there’s a double standard for mea culpas.

When Islamist terrorists go on a killing binge, the non-Muslim world immediately puts pressure on all Muslim intellectuals and the great mass of ordinary people as well. Again and again they must dissociate themselves explicitly and just as explicitly condemn actions with which they clearly have no personal connection. On the street and in the media innocent Muslims are routinely tarred with communal guilt. They’re racially profiled, and those with common names, the Muslim equivalent of John Smith, find themselves stuck forever on no fly lists. Although Christians, both clergy and their congregations, are not obliged to dissociate themselves from every mass murder by culturally Christian maniacs, Muslim silence is taken as proof of culpability. What’s more, the bloody passages in the Bible and the Koran get different readings, the former (take a look at Leviticus) being taken as embarrassing anachronisms, the latter as the present day intention of all Believers. To be a Muslim is to live under suspicion.

I was reminded of the peculiarities of this double standard problem as I encountered a fresh variant in American media reactions to reports of Muslims murdered just for being Muslims by members of the Buddhist majority in Myanmar. Buddhists there have raided several Muslim enclaves, torching houses, looting shops, killing people. It’s one of the less savory aspects of the relaxation of military rule in that country. These reports from Myanmar reminded me, in turn, of the continuing, largely ignored maltreatment of non-Buddhist Tamils by the chauvanistic Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka.

Although there are many interesting aspects to the history of Islam in Myanmar, they aren’t the point here. The point is that Muslims are being slaughtered by Buddhists, yet Buddhism isn’t coming in for criticism. No one is asking this Venerable or that Venerable to grovel as imams must grovel to atone for the actions of every misguided, bomb-planting Muslim youth.

This chain of thought got underway a couple of weeks ago, when I received the latest issue of a twice-yearly Buddhist publication called (ever so appropriately, I once thought) “The Inquiring Mind.” The Burmese vein of Theravada Buddhism has been very influential in the spread of the Dharma in the U.S., and it occurred to me that I might find in “IM” some mention of the distressing events in Myanmar. I found nothing. The inquiring mind wasn’t inquiring.

I guess I’m not surprised. I can’t recall having read any significant “IM” commentary on the distinctly uncompassionate victimization of non-belligerent Hindu or Christian Tamils by Buddhists during the guerilla war in Sri Lanka. But “IM” isn’t the only example of non-feasance. I subscribe to another Buddhist publication, a glossy monthly aptly named “Tricycle.” Its latest issue also fails to mention the situation in Myanmar. And I can’t remember any “Tricycle” issues grappling in a serious way with the implications of the violence in Sri Lanka over the years. (I’m happy to be enlightened if I missed anything major.)

Meanwhile, mainstream American publications have also failed to demand an explanation of how adherents of a creed based on non-violent compassion for all sentient beings can behave so murderously. Buddhists pride themselves on their deep study of consciousness and the workings of the mind, and yet they seem to have little or no interest in plumbing, exposing and expiating this very obvious chasm between core beliefs and bloody actions.

Perhaps the most influential leaders of Theravada Buddhism, the branch of Dharma practiced in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, have decided not to wash dirty laundry in public. If so, even though Buddhists haven’t declared war on Westerners, which doesn’t mean that Western values aren’t regularly trashed, it’s time for the rest of us to insist that Buddhist leaders face the harsh music Muslim leaders have had to face. (The Dalai Lama wouldn’t be the most useful apologist here. He leads a sub-branch of another vein of Buddhism.) And how about some engagement from the many Buddhist lay people in America, especially those who teach and write about Dharma? Although the Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has called for a socially-engaged Buddhism, most American practitioners seem to prefer the navel-gazing variety. The beguiling injunction to practice loving-kindness degenerates, in all too many instances, into a mind-numbing mantra practice.

Particularly poignant in regard to the Muslim-bashing in Myanmar has been the restraint and remoteness of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s virtual saint, who is reputed to have meditated regularly while under house arrest. During those long years as a political prisoner she was globally admired as a martyr of conscience, and she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent resistance to military rule. Since she’s been free to speak out, however, she seems to have lost her tongue. She certainly hasn’t been campaigning very vigorously to protect the lives and human rights of Myanmar’s Muslims. The Lady is a politician, it seems, not a Buddhist saint. Why is the world giving her such an easy pass?

Terrorism in Turkey – who sent Ecevit Sanli?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

On February 1, Ecevit Sanli, a Turkish suicide bomber, blew himself up at the entry to the US Embassy compound in Ankara.   He also murdered a Turkish guard and wounded several other people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Sanli turned out to belong to a far left Turkish organization – called the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front - which first appeared in the 1970s when left and right political extremes engaged one another in pitched gun-battles on city streets.  

At that time, Turkey’s parliamentary government was weakening by the day until September 1980 when the country's generals stepped in and stopped the violence that was wreaking havoc on the population.  Life for normal citizens had been difficult enough during the preceding years so that most welcomed a return to stability imposed by the country’s historically well respected military:  gas lines had extended for blocks – even coffee was in short supply - the internecine violence designed to destabilize the regime had just worsened the already bad situation. Locally grown produce was the mainstay sold in the markets.  The Turkish lira had become worthless in the international marketplace as a result of the political instability, domestic unrest and weak economy.

Leftwing terrorism

That this small illegal terrorist organization had gone through several reincarnations and name changes since its beginnings in the 1970s and Sanli had previously served time in jail for committing acts of terrorism makes one wonder about its reappearance.  This was not a half-crazed man operating alone.  Nor was Sanli an Islamic militant. Far from it.  The group had introduced suicide bombers to its repertoire about ten years ago. So what were Sanli’s motives, what was the purpose of the attack and who was the instigator lurking in the shadows?

From the scanty evidence thus far, it’s pretty clear that Sanli was dispatched on his last mission by someone looking to publicize a cause, to embarrass or frighten the Turkish government or the US – a NATO ally which had recently brought Patriot antimissile systems into country’s south to help protect the Turks and the Syrian refugees flowing across the border from the civil war raging next door.

Or could the bombing have been to register negative reaction to the Turkish government’s recent arrests of nearly 100 people accused of having ties to the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front and in protest of the government’s harsh anti-terrorism laws?    What kind of message was attached to this human detonator?  Was the reason for his actions purely home grown – or not?

Conspiracy theories and spy stories

Speculation, of course, covers the gamut.  Turkey is part of the Middle East where conspiracy theories run rampant and spy stories have natural homes but the real question is who or which country, countries or groups were behind this recent incident and why.  Terrorism of this sort comes cheaply – particularly when the individual in question is deranged to begin with. But what exactly does a one-off suicide of this sort represent in the larger picture of Turkish or Middle Eastern politics in 2013?    

Legal Reasoning Must Not Be Secret

By Patricia Lee Sharpe and Patricia H. Kushlis

CNN reports that “the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning will receive a classified document that seeks to justify the administration's policy of targeting Americans overseas via drone attacks.”   Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein seems to be satisfied.  We are not. We can see no justification for classifying such a document.

If the Obama administration and its successors are to be given the right to assassinate Americans abroad,  we must know the legal reasoning so that we the people may judge whether such actions can be  justified under U.S. and international law and so that the perpetrators themselves may be prosecuted if and when they overstep or misapply their authority.  Of course, such jeopardy may be what the Obama administration is deeply afraid of.  Although we are not convinced that the U.S. Constitution can be twisted to allow execution without trial,  we cannot see how any such actions can ever be immune from independent judicial review.  As others have noted, neither the use of lethal force by ordinary American troops nor by police confronting violence at home is beyond the reach of judicial review.  In matters of life and death transparency and accountability are essential.

Even assuming we might be persuaded that assassination is constitutional and might sometimes be the best course of action, we and many others believe that the U.S. public deserves to know, in detail, ahead of time, how those targeted for assassination will be selected. The criteria must be public.  For one thing, to keep these criteria secret is to put countless angry Americans in jeopardy.  A legally defensible definition of terms like “imminent danger” is in order lest  Americans traveling or resident abroad be unable to speak out honestly when they are critical of the U.S.  This is a freedom upon which we Americans have always prided ourselves. Others have admired us for our candor.  They have envied our freedom.   Clear definitions of what crimes are to be punished by instant, silent, arbitrary death are absolutely essential, lest innocent people find themselves in the cross-hairs of distant drone pilots. We’ve all said stupid, violent, angry things.  Many of us have allied ourselves briefly with foolish causes.  Are we all to be assassinated?

Some might object that understandable definitions will make it possible for villains to go on spreading poison.  Since when are Americans punished for words rather than deeds?  This is a very dangerous trajectory, and its venomous results are already being felt at home in the use of manipulative entrapment targeting justifiably angry young Muslims and the compiling of don’t-fly lists which impede people’s freedom of movement without giving them expeditious access to possibly wrongly applied criteria. We might note that  Ezra Pound, whose critique of U.S. capitalism was vicious in the extreme,  was spared the death penalty after cooperating with the Axis during World War II, and the U.S. was stronger for it. 

Others will object that targets with knowledge of the criteria may change their habits, modify their pronouncements, and thus live to rant another day.  That surely would be a good thing.  The goal, we would have thought, was to prevent violent acts.   

We understand that the details of any properly justified operation must always be held closely.  The publication of relevant legal doctrines, however,  will not endanger any actual operation or any U.S. agent who acts within the bounds of the law.  

Benghazi and State: Where do the bucks stop?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Whether Hillary’s reaction to the Accountability Review Board’s Benghazi Report upon reading it was to faint, hit her head, and suffer a rare blood clot following a concussion or whether the two sad events simply coincided and collided like asteroids in the night sky is a question we may never have answered.

The 39 page unclassified portion of the ARB report that was released to the public on December 20, 2012 was most notable for what it didn’t reveal as for what it did.  Maybe some of my unanswered questions are contained in the classified sections – but that I won’t know for years.  Unless, of course, the contents dribble out piecemeal between now and then. That’s possible. State usually leaks far less than the Pentagon or the Hill so first train your ear trumpets in those directions before leaning too hard towards Foggy Bottom.         

The report corroborates that multiple mistakes were made – not just that tragic night – but in the months before. They go deep into the heart of the system’s weaknesses.  Leadership – or actually lack thereof – is a problem the report alludes to with capital Ls although names of officials above the Assistant Secretary, or bureaucratic Firewall, as Diplopundit put it, are missing. This might be adequate for a networked organization but the State Department is institutionalized hierarchy personified and the report tells us that news of the attack was being called in as it happened to State’s 24/7 Diplomatic Security Center and relayed to the NSC and elsewhere.  At least that piece of the building apparently works as it should.

A follow up – even more scathing - 29 page report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that appeared on December 30, 2012 tells us that the attack was reported real time to State and the information transmitted quickly to the Department of Defense. The bipartisan Senate report also highlighted ten major failings needing correction – within State, within Defense, throughout the Intelligence Community and across bureaucratic lines.  Not all of these failures are contained in the ARB findings.

Here are a few of the most striking - listed in no particular order:

• the Pentagon’s failure to provide its relatively new Africa Command with the requisite resources to conduct embassy rescue operations in its theater of operation despite the fact that the Command had specific responsibility for doing so;

• the administration’s muddled messaging during the first days after the tragedy despite the fact it was patently clear to the intelligence community from the beginning that a terrorist attack had occurred;

• Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy’s testimony in which he told the Senate Hearing that the security situation in Benghazi had been a “flashing red light” well before September 11.  This despite the fact that State had refused to provide the security needed. Yet, if it was unable to protect do so, State could have closed the Temporary Facility.  What is perhaps most troubling about Kennedy’s testimony is that he must have had a major say in the decisions – Eric Boswell, head of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and Charlene Lamb, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security worked for him – and as I pointed out earlier, the State Department personifies the traditional hierarchical bureaucracy. The buck would not have stopped with either Boswell or Lamb who Peter Van Buren argues was Cheryl Mills' (Hillary's chief of staff) choice not that of the Foreign Service.  What is not said in either the ARB or the Senate report is where the funding and personnel decisions for the Benghazi facility - whatever its name - were made, how and who made them.              

Back to 2008

Before Hillary Clinton set foot in the department, she knew that it suffered from severe financial and administrative stress.  She smartly established a Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources bringing in Jack Lew - Obama's current Chief of Staff and now nominee to become the next Treasury Secretary - to fill the new position.  Lew lasted at State about a year, spent his time addressing budgetary deficiencies and much to his credit, got Congress to approve major funding increases for the beleagured department before he moved on and over to the White House.

Hillary didn’t, however, tackle other flashing yellow light administrative shortcomings – leaving management of the department and the embassies to Patrick F. Kennedy who had been brought back to State by mentor and then Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte in 2007. But before that Kennedy had been Chief of Staff at the US Transition Unit in Baghdad in 2004 where he worked for Negroponte and had held the same position in the CPA (2003) - a period of chaos in Iraq when millions upon millions of dollars disappeared.

Why Hillary kept Kennedy in the position after her arrival in 2009 is a mystery.  Anyone who was responsible for coordinating the reorganization of the foreign affairs agencies under Madeleine Albright - a real hash job whose Sandy-like after-effects reverberate today - or forbidding American Embassy officers from  attending Obama's speech in Berlin July 24, 2008 on the grounds it was partisan politics despite the fact that Americans have the freedom to assemble under the US Constitution shrieks foremost, in my view, of a serious lack of judgment. 

Deja Vu All Over Again

Then there's that thorny not-so-little issue of State's mismanagement of diplomatic security  in Africa August 7, 1998 when Al Qaeda blew up the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing over 220 people including 12 Americans and injuring over 4,000.

Benghazi: So Many Questions, So Few Answers

By Patricia H. Kushlis

As the tragic news trickled – then flooded – out of Benghazi last week in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the US Mission in Benghazi (it has yet to receive Consulate status), circumstances surrounding the burning of that building and the deaths of the four American employees including US Ambassador Chris Stevens raise multiple questions in need answers. 

On September 20, Hillary Clinton announced the creation of an Accountability Review Board to look into what happened. Her announcement came none too soon.  The board’s inquiry is to be chaired by Thomas Pickering a veteran diplomat and former Under Secretary of State.  Pickering is smart, respected and an excellent choice. The panel will be operating under a law passed in 1986 intended to strengthen security at American diplomatic missions.

But where’s the line between adequate security and need for US diplomats to have decent access to people in the countries where our installations are located?  I think this balance still needs to be found. Pickering of all people must understand the dilemma but our massive security apparatus which has mushroomed since 9/11 and especially State’s Office of Overseas Buildings (OBO) and Diplomatic Security (D/S) also need to recognize that one size does not fit all.   

So many questions, so few answers

Nevertheless, if I were a member of Pickering’s inquiry, here are some of the questions – listed in no particular order - I would ask.

A Glimpse of What Could Be Lost in Timbuktu

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Timbuktu, for most Westerners, is simply another word for the end of the world.  Today, in fact, it’s a somewhat decayed real city on the southern edge of the Sahara desert.

Once upon a time, however, Timbuktu was a vital commercial and cultural crossroads for innumerable African civilizations.  For this reason, non-Muslim historians as well as Muslims who treasure all aspects of their richly complex past are alarmed by the destruction that’s been taking place in Timbuktu and other ancient cities like Gao since Salafists wrested control of the rebellion in Northern Mali from Tuareg insurgents.

Most reportage from the area has emphasized the spoiling, wholly or in part, of shrines and mosques accused of encouraging idol-worship.  But the threat goes beyond the usual crude iconoclasm of al Qaeda-related sects.  According to photographer Alexandra Huddleston, “not only are thousands of ancient manuscripts and holy sites under threat, but also an ancient scholarly culture.”  She has documented this culture in the past, and now she has created a video that shows us what we are in danger of losing.

Go to this site for Alexandra's heart-rending introduction to Timbuktu and the culture it fostered over the centuries.  Go to this site and weep.  And protest.  If you want to know more,  follow the links that Alexandra has provided. 

And here are some pieces I've written on developments in Northern Mali:  Iconoclasts in Timbuktu and Malaise in Mali: Is a Sudan-like Solution Possible? 

Iconoclasts in Timbuktu

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Not so long ago Buddhists and art lovers of the world were aghast when the Afghan Taliban destroyed the famous Buddhist statues in Bamiyan. I thought of this tragedy when I learned that  Salafist gangs known as the Ansar Dine (Defenders of Islam) connected with Al Qaeda in Northen Mali are destroying Sufi shrines and have smashed in the main door of the world-famous 15th mosque in Timbuktu. You might say that this strain of Islam produces equal opportunity iconoclasts.

The Golden Calf Precedent

The prohibition of idol worship has a long history among the so-called Abrahamic religions.  One has only to read what the Christians call the Old Testament and the Jews call Torah to find the story of how the Israelites went astray and began worshiping a golden calf and how the idol was destroyed and the wrong-doers castigated when Abraham found out. Is this so different from what’s happening in Mali today? 

Protestant extremists during the Reformation were equally stringent about rejecting what they called saint worship among Catholics.  They destroyed monasteries and cleansed their own places of worship of all imagery.  The grounds were the same as those cited by today’s Salafists: the Catholics/Sufis were inserting saints between believers and God.  As a result, the Puritan churches in Massachusetts Bay Colony, for example, were beautiful, but austere in the extreme. There is a strong strain of equally stringent Calvinistic puritanism in some branches of contemporary  Presbyterianism.  Christmas trees and Santa Claus are rejected as unwelcome pagan traditions. No organs or pianos either.  Only the human voice during worship. 

Missionaries Singing the Same Song

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Christian and Muslim missionaries made identical demands of the Batak tribes of North Sumatra: smash your idols; destroy your ritual objects; eradicate your pagan past.  Most converts, some out of fear, some out of zeal, acquiesced in the wholesale destruction of their material culture.

Some people, fortunately, resisted.  They hid their religio/cultural treasures away, some for centuries, some for decades, and many, though made of wood, survived into the 1980s when I was sent by  USIA to be Branch Public Affairs Officer in Medan, Indonesia. My philosophy being that you can’t influence people unless you understand them, I tried to find out as much as I could about the Batak culture that was so haughtily despised by the Javanese I’d known in Jakarta. And so I met people who, though Muslim or Christian by confession, were proud of their Batak roots.  They proudly showed me their treasures, especially a physician who had been a life-long collector of these materials.  This doctor’s home was like a museum, and together we conceived the idea of an exhibit at the American Center.  It would combine his collection with contributions which I subsequently sought from every corner of the Batak world.

The exhibit, the first of its kind, was a smashing success. The governor of West Sumatra, not only a general but himself a Batak, opened it, and it was reviewed enthusiastically by the premier national news magazine, thus putting the American Center in a very favorable light in the cultural capital of the country.  As far as I’m concerned, it was the best thing I did during my two years in Medan. (And for you bean counters, note that it cost us less than $500, including gas for those collecting trips, refreshments for the reception, a little staff overtime and a slightly higher electricity bill.)

The Power of Icons

Interestingly enough, the Doctor’s wife did not share her husband’s enthusiasm for the objects in his collection.  (She collected antique Chinese pottery and porcelain.) Some of the figures had stains which were, she was sure, evidence of having been anointed with sacred oils and powders.  That being the case, they might still have power, and so they frightened her. 

Perhaps my Batak friends should once again think of hiding their treasures.  Indonesian Islam is now finding room for proponants of violent intolerance of the sort we used to think was incompatible with Indonesia's supposedly well-ingrained syncretism.

Meanwhile, I think of the Doctor’s highly-educated wife when I consider the vehemence of Wahabis, who eradicated most (or all) evidence of pre-Muslim culture in Saudi Arabia.  I thought of her when the Ansar Dine, the Wahabi-related Salafists,  pushing their Tuareg nationalist allies aside,  set about smashing the frighteningly-powerful mausoleums that are precious to the local people who consider themselves to be perfectly good Muslims.  The so-called “saint-worshippers” had to flee, of course. The alternative would be life under an alien Taliban-like regime.

No to Imported Islam

On July 5, non-Salafist  Muslims converged on Mali’s capital Bamako to protest the defamations in Timbuktu.  Thousands of ordinary people gathered and many religious leaders spoke out strongly against the shrine-smashing. This is the sort of thing that was said:   “All of us are joining hands to protest against the profanation of the mausoleums of Timbuktu.”  “Those who carried out these acts...have no notion of Islam.” “No to imported Islam [which is to say, from Wahabi Arabia], yes to the Islam of our [African] parents.”  The sense of possible loss in Bamako was strong. “Timbuktu was founded on a pure Islam, respectful of men, of all men.” 

The non-Muslim world is strongly sympathetic to proponents of tolerant Islam and to the need for the protection of world heritage sites derived from all religious and spiritual  traditions.    Consider the following statement by Francesco Bandarin, UNESCO'S Assistant Director-General for Culture, when he asked if the destruction of shrines and artifacts in Timbuktu can be seen as an “act of war”:

It is, and it has been declared so by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. In effect there is an article called Article 8 of the Rome Treaty, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court. It talks specifically about destruction of heritage. So we are in a zone of international criminal law which is clearly determined; they are violating this law and they are subject to prosecution. Mali is a signatory of this treaty, they will be prosecuted.

Unfortunately such sentiments will have no impact on those who have now wrested control of Timbuktu.  As a media man for the Ansar Dine put it, “There is no world heritage.  It doesn’t exist. The infidels must not get involved in our business.”

Wars of Religion

And so, pious statements from a powerless UNESCO notwithstanding,  the iconoclasm will continue, until tolerant Islam is able or willing to protect itself from well-armed zealous puritans.  The West had its brutal wars of religion, of which remnants survive even in the U.S. today.  Islam is now caught up  in a perhaps more complex network of wars of religion into which the West, especially the U.S.,  has allowed itself to become entangled (though most Americans don't see it that way).  The  perfectly predictable sort of blowback is what we call Islamic terrorist extremism.  Perhaps the ultimate trajectory for Islam will resemble that of Christianity.  Sects will discover it's better to agree to disagree and work by persuasion alone.  In the meantime, the single-minded  iconoclasts, though apparently in the minority, seem to have the zeal that will always intimidate the lukewarm.  To say nothing of the weapons, of course.