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11/09/2006
The Post-9/11 World
More thoughts on the war on terror, from the perspective of five
years after 9/11, from a few essays in the Sept./Oct. 2006 edition
of The National Interest.
Peter Bergen, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and
the author of “The Osama bin Laden I Know.”
[Excerpts]
“It is not simply that Al-Qaeda has managed to regroup from its
base on the Afghan-Pakistan border and can, therefore, initiate
another attack on the United States. The situation is more
complex: many of the underlying problems and factors that led to
the attacks in the first place continue to fester .
“Decline and stagnation in the Middle East, and feelings of
humiliation in the Muslim world. The historian Bernard Lewis is
the principal exponent of the idea that the Muslim world is in a
crisis largely attributable to centuries of long decline from
prominence embodied in the fate of the once powerful Ottoman
Empire and its ignominious post-World War I carve up by the
British and French. Lewis also explains that in the mid-twentieth
century the problems of the Middle East were compounded by
the import of two Western ideas: socialism and secular Arab
nationalism, neither of which delivered on their promises of
creating prosperous and just societies. By implication Lewis
suggests that feelings of humiliation are the animating force
behind Al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
“Three weeks after the 9/11 attacks, as the United States began
launching air strikes against Taliban positions, a videotape of Bin
Laden sitting on a rocky outcrop suddenly appeared on Al-
Jazeera television. On the tape Bin Laden said, ‘What America
is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we
have tasted for scores of years. [The Islamic world] has been
tasting this humiliation and this degradation for eighty years.’
Bin Laden continued, ‘Neither America nor the people who live
in it will dream of security before we live in it in Palestine, and
not before the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad [the
Arabian Peninsula].’ So in his first statement following 9/11,
Bin Laden emphasized the ‘humiliation’ of the Muslim world
and the deleterious effects of American foreign policies in the
Middle East .
“U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East. By Bin Laden’s own
account, that’s why Al-Qaeda is attacking the United States. His
animosity towards the United States has never been driven by a
cultural critique. He is silent on the matters of Madonna,
Hollywood, homosexuality or drugs in his diatribes against
America. By his own account, U.S. support for Israel, in
particular the support it gave to Israel’s invasion of southern
Lebanon in 1982, first triggered Bin Laden’s anti-Americanism,
which during the 1980s took the form of urging a boycott of
American goods. Now, of course, it is the U.S. presence in Iraq
that has emerged as the principal rallying cry of the militant
jihadists. As there is a bipartisan consensus among American
elites on the need for a robust U.S. military presence in the
Middle East and for the continued strong support for Israel,
American foreign policies will likely continue to provoke
resentment in the Muslim world for the foreseeable future .
“9/11 does have something to do with a particular reading of
Islamic texts. In all the many discussions of the ‘root causes’ of
Islamist terrorism, Islam is rarely, if ever, mentioned. This is
surprising because if you asked Bin Laden what his war was
about, he would answer that it’s all about the defense of Islam.
This is not to say that Islam is in any way a ‘bad’ or ‘evil’
religion, but on the principle that we should listen to what our
enemies are saying, Bin Laden justifies his war based on a
corpus of Muslim beliefs and can find enough ammunition in the
Quran to give his war a patina of religious legitimacy. For
instance, Bin Laden often invokes the ‘Sword’ verses of the
Quran, which urge unprovoked (pre-emptive!) attacks on
infidels. Of course, that is a selective reading of the Quran as
there are other verses that justify only ‘defensive’ jihads, but the
point is the Sword verses are in the Quran and therefore are the
Word of God. This is not something that apologists can simply
wish away. This conviction that they are doing God’s will frees
Islamist terrorists to conduct mass-casualty attacks of the kind
that secular terrorist groups historically never undertook .
“Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East helped to incubate the
militants. It was their experience in the hellish jails of Cairo, for
instance, that radicalized both Qutb and Zawahiri. And it is also
not an accident that so many key members of Al-Qaeda have
been Egyptians and Saudis. However, with the present price of
oil it is very unlikely that the Saudi regime will do much to
reform politically. Meanwhile, Mubarak’s government in Egypt
– having made some pretense of reform with the presidential
elections in September 2005 and parliamentary elections two
months later – is now even more repressive than before 9/11,
cracking down on judges, for instance, and imprisoning its
political opponents on trumped up charges. The ‘Arab spring’
that was touted by some commentators in 2005 now seems a
distant mirage .
“Bin Laden adopted a war against ‘the far enemy’ in order to
hasten the demise of the ‘near enemy’ regimes in the Middle
East, so his vision of political Islam could be installed around the
Muslim world. And he used 9/11 to advance that cause. That
effort has largely failed, but the underlying problems in the
Muslim world remain virtually unchanged five years later and
will likely provide the fuel for future attacks against us.”
---
Antony (sic) T. Sullivan, director of Near East Support Services,
a consulting firm focusing on the Arab and Islamic world.
[Excerpts]
“Five years after 9/11, the United States is not winning the
inaptly named ‘war’ on terrorism. Individual victories have been
won, and some enemy capabilities have been significantly
degraded. But the larger struggle rages on, and seems likely to
continue to do so for a very long time.
“Al Qaeda today has become an ideological movement rather
than merely a single entity. Indeed, this transformation may
constitute the greatest threat now posed by Al-Qaeda. Ideologies
are much more difficult to destroy than organizations. While the
strategic threat from what has been called ‘Al-Qaeda prime’ may
have lessened, the tactical threat posed by grassroots groups that
now operate worldwide under its ideological umbrella has
multiplied. As American complacency deepens and memories of
9/11 fade, Al-Qaeda, or its offshoots, wait. Unlike Americans,
jihadists have a glacial sense of time.
“Osama bin Laden knows all this. And that is why he probably
continues to smile. Despite Al-Qaeda’s failure to overthrow any
Arab regime, or to mount another terrorist attack within the
United States, Osama bin Laden undoubtedly believes that the
long-term correlation of forces remains in his favor.
“From the jihadist point of view, the war of attrition in the
Middle East is succeeding in weakening American and Western
resolve to keep substantial numbers of military forces in the
region. In their judgment, that war of attrition needs only to be
sustained for ultimate victory to be attained. Jihadists know that
many other parties in the region, for their own reasons, will
continue to abet their efforts. That too is a reason for their likely
long-term, continuing, geostrategic optimism.
“Iran may now be preparing an ‘army of martyrs’ in case the
United States attacks its nuclear infrastructure. Forty-thousand
suicide bombers are said to have already been trained, out of a
projected total of 55,000. This army is reportedly slated to attack
U.S., Israeli and Western interests throughout the world, in the
event war between the United States and Iran should erupt.”
[Iran’s shadow is long and Syria has “entirely rebuilt its
intelligence network in Lebanon so that it will be able to
negotiate with America over its future relationship with Lebanon
from a position of greater strength than it has now.”]
“While all of this is happening, Al-Qaeda is reported to be
reconstituting its cells across the Middle East and in Africa,
Europe and Southeast Asia under a younger leadership. Local
cells are said now to have freedom to undertake operations
without reference to any higher authority. If this is true,
decapitation of the monster (for example by the elimination of
Bin Laden or Zawahiri) may accomplish little.
“Al-Qaeda reportedly also has developed plans to undertake
sophisticated military operations against American, European
and Israeli targets as well as to assassinate government officials.
In the tradition of the Taliban’s destruction of the monumental
Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda-related groups are
even reported to have discussed the possible destruction of the
pyramids or even the Sphinx in Egypt. However far-fetched this
may be, it does suggest that informed opinion in the Muslim
Middle East believes that Al-Qaeda is far from moribund. That
itself is significant .
“Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates is reported to be
functioning as a center for terrorist financing. Terrorist money
transfers are said to be concentrated in Dubai. As a result, the
UAE is said to have been spared attacks by jihadists, and is likely
to continue to enjoy favored status as long as this situation
holds.”
[Sullivan adds, however, that there is no doubt Al-Qaeda’s prime
strategic capability has been significantly degraded a 6-7 on a
scale of 0 to 10, ten being “totally”. But, “During the same
period an army of potential jihadists has been created inside
the U.S. prison system.” As they are released, it may help Al-
Qaeda quickly regain its former capability.]
“Al-Qaeda is patient. Eight years passed between the first attack
on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 9/11. Since 9/11, only
five years have elapsed. For Al-Qaeda the movement, that is
merely a moment in time. Al-Qaeda may well believe that it is
right on schedule as far as mounting another major terrorist strike
in the United States is concerned.
“Meanwhile, operations by Al-Qaeda or its grassroots imitators
have not slowed since 9/11. Such operations have stretched from
Jordan to Saudi Arabia and on through Indonesia, Spain and the
United Kingdom. Clearly, Al-Qaeda and its imitators remain
very much alive.
“Sleep well, sweet prince. And pleasant dreams.”
---
Hott Spotts will return November 16.
Brian Trumbore
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