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.”
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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.”
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Hott Spotts will return November 16.
Brian Trumbore
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