Is the war on terror being lost?

The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan observed earlier this week that the Iraq war has done little to increase security across the world or halt the activities of international terrorists. He has touched on a sensitive subject ahead of the US Presidential elections.

More than three years have passed since September 11, 2001. Like the past two years, ritual gatherings have taken place in Lower Manhattan, New York, a lonely patch of earth in rural Pennsylvania, and a spot near the restored breach in the Pentagon.

The crowds were slightly smaller this year than in the past years, the collective grief probably slightly restrained given the gradual healing of raw wounds. This year, once again, affected families paid special homage by observing minutes of silence and recitation of names of the 2,749 who perished on that day. They remembered the worst terrorist attack in US history, which seared the national psyche and left pain in its wake throughout the world.

The immediate and spontaneous response had been outrage and anger. On that day of infamy, almost everyone identified with stricken America. This included the entire Islamic world which supported the common determination to root out terrorism.

Yet, in the last three years, this sympathy has dwindled. Support, it is generally agreed, has been frittered away. The US has become more controversial, and NATO left under more strain. For various reasons, many embittered Muslims also perceive the "war on terror" as an assault on Islam itself.

Recent weeks have shown that terrorists can and do continue to strike almost at will. The terrible evil perpetrated at Beslan, Russia has been followed by bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Terrorist bombings have also taken place within Bangladesh leaving many dead and hundreds injured.

Over the last three years, there have been regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq, but terrorists have also shown defiance through their malicious actions in Bali, in Madrid, in Moscow, and in Riyadh.

This unrest, that has pervaded the world provokes one to ask some hard questions about how the "war on terror" is being conducted.

Take Afghanistan for example. While the Americans were successful in being able to remove the Taliban regime, most of the things that have happened since then have been examples of how to get it wrong.

We have had a presidential election there, but it has only resulted in more controversy. The whole electoral process and mechanism have been subject to debate. This has made results that much more inconsequential. There will be a superficial calm but little acceptance. This might, in all probability, lead to unravelling of the political infrastructure once again. It is already being seen as being a top-down effort rather than a grass roots decision. This will only add to the brew of trouble.

One can only hope that Tony Blair will remember his original promise to the Afghans: "This time we will not walk away from you." Most analysts are already pointing fingers and reiterating that the evolving political process in Afghanistan is somewhat of a sham, being put in place firstly to enhance Bush's image before the US election, and secondly, to enable the US and British governments to slowly distance themselves from the "quagmire."

As I have noted in one of my earlier columns, today, provincial warlords rule most of the country in real terms. The opium harvest, virtually wiped out by the Taliban, has returned with a vengeance. Law and order outside Kabul has also gone down in the absence of visible NATO troops.

Afghanistan, three years down the road, is possibly only marginally less dangerous than what it was before. It is at a sensitive cross-road where its countryside is again in danger of dissolving into chaos. Despite some progress in education, health care, and infrastructure, Afghanistan remains far more unstable than Western leaders care to admit. Afghanistan is a nation building challenge beside which even Iraq pales into insignificance.

Let us now look at Iraq. The last four weeks have proved one thing again and again. Despite claims that Iraq has changed for the better and that democracy is back, Iraq's administrative horizon is littered with corpses, suicide bombings, and continued civilian deaths.

Kofi Annan's uncharacteristically blunt statement that the Iraq invasion was illegal and not sanctioned by the UN Security Council or in accordance with the UN Charter has predictably generated discussion. Barely a day has gone by without more criticism of the Coalition's decision to invade Iraq. Recently, there has also been the definitive confirmation from the Iraqi Survey Group that Saddam did not in fact possess any weapon of mass destruction -- the main casus belli for the US and Britain.

Newly leaked Whitehall documents have also exposed the secret manoeuvring behind Blair's decision to go to war. It would appear that in March 2002, he was more concerned about regime change, than, as he said publicly, with the danger from WMD. They also revealed that many British senior officials privately believed that Mr. Bush wanted to complete his father's unfinished 1991 business in a "grudge match" against the Iraqi leader.

I will overlook these dodgy dossiers but nearly six hundred days after Bush's boast that the mission was accomplished in Iraq, the number of US troops dead in Iraq has crossed 1,000 and civilian casualties are beyond 13,000. The country itself is in shambles where bandits of different descriptions, militias of questionable backgrounds, and kidnappers flourish.

The current scenario persuades me to quote Robin Cook's (former British Cabinet Minister) statement, published in the Times of London on September 19: "We were told that the conquest of Iraq was a victory against terror. It now seems like a spectacular own goal." The imbroglio that is Iraq, and the role it is playing in fostering terrorism, was also aptly described on September 20 by Sir Ivor Roberts (the British Ambassador in Rome) during a meeting in Tuscany, Italy when he observed that George Bush was "the best recruiting sergeant for al-Qaida." This candid appraisal might have been a diplomatic indiscretion but was full of double-meaning. His criticism went further by alleging that the Bush Administration was subject to "conditioning and pressure" from Israel and the Jewish lobby. His remarks, and that of the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan (dismissed from his post last week), also showed a growing mood of self-criticism and second thoughts over the war on terror and Iraq within the Blair government.

Tony Benn, British statesman, in his latest book, Free Radical, has put his finger on the nail in this regard. He has alleged that this current disappointing situation is due to "no serious thought" having been given by Washington or London "as to the likely consequence of the war and what policies should be pursued after the war was won in Iraq."

Any serious appraisal of the prevailing scenario would tempt one to conclude that we are left today with a "war on terror" that is hardly going anywhere, and that the contemporary world is more full of anger and prejudice than before.

The quest for security, both individual and collective, has resulted not only in serious changes of life-style, but also in erosion of civil rights and good-will among different communities. A twist has surfaced within community relations where it is being recognised that anti-terror measures are alienating Muslims and that stop and search powers are being employed disproportionately against Muslims in Britain and the US. This adverse view was recently reflected in a report published by the Anglican Council of the Church of England.

The increasing lawlessness, the fast-spreading anarchy, the spiralling casualties of innocent civilians in Iraq, and the demoting of the Palestinian issue to the back-burner are all contributing in their own way to anti-US feelings all over the Muslim world and eroding the huge international good-will that went the US's way after 9/11. The net result appears to be that Americans are now probably more vulnerable rather than more secure. This is indeed paradoxical.

Terrorism is unfortunately in robust health and news of its early demise appears to be a gross exaggeration.

Muhammad Zamir is a former Secretary and Ambassador.