Seven years after 9/11
SEVEN years ago today, the myth of US invincibility was shattered by a bunch of terrorists. Regrettably the terrorists, who claimed to be Muslims, chose innocent civilians as their targets to take out on the US government their grievances for what they perceived as the anti-Muslim policy of the US. It was meant to be a demonstrable protest on behalf of the Muslims.
Little did they realise that what they were doing in the name of Islam, the very act of killing innocent people, who were not involved in any direct conflict with them, was in itself anathema in Islam. Their grievances may have been justified by the brazen US double standards and unprincipled stand -- demonstrated in the Middle East, Palestine and Israel, appearing to be protagonists of democracy yet supporting incorrigible despots, helping in overthrow of democratically elected governments, and in other similar despicable acts. But what the terrorists did on September 11, 2001 we cannot condone.
Nobody can justify the more than three thousand deaths in the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Not even the fact that the US embargo against Iraq had killed several times more than that; not even the several thousand deaths in Chile at the hands of a military tyrant whom the US government helped in dislodging a democratically elected government, exactly 28 years to the day that the Twin Towers were reduced to ashes -- can justify the deaths on 9/11.
The world has changed since 9/11. And ever since the so-called global war on terror was launched through Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in October 2001, and Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003 the planning of which predated 9/11, the world order has continued to degenerate into near disorder. And every year since then we ask whether the objectives of the Bush government have been met.
It may be pointed out that the Bush government had offered more than one hundred reasons for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq. Each new justification was as unconvincing as the previous one, betraying the administration's predilections for falsehood and prevarication of facts to justify illegal actions.
Whether rationality will dictate US international conduct under a new president one is not certain. Whether we will see the US using its power to prevent conflict or vice versa, we are not sure. The signals are mixed and one wonders whether the White House is ready to accommodate a black president -- who would recast the current US strategy of global war on terrorism
This is also the right time to look at the two theatres where the fight against global terror is being conducted, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The verdict is out in both the cases. Many see Iraq as an unmitigated failure of the US policy while some have gone so far as to call the venture a defeat. In spite of McCain insisting that US forces are winning the war in Iraq and, according to him, if allowed to fulfill their tasks, "would leave behind a working democracy, check disruptive influences and clear the way for a transformed Middle East," and the Bush administration flaunting the "success" that the "surge" has accomplished, the mission remains far from accomplished. The claim that al-Qaeda in Iraq has been completely defeated cuts little ice with impartial observers.
Despite the Bush administrations effort to link Saddam with al-Qaeda, official reports have discounted that possibility. The US ploy to justify continued presence in Iraq, as a guarantee of safety of the US, by overplaying the presence and role of al-Qaeda in that country has been also contested by experts. Even the US National Intelligence Estimate, released in 2006, described Iraq as a "cause celebre" that attracted many Islamic radicals from other parts of the world to gravitate towards Iraq. And according to Bruce Hoffman, a veteran counter terrorism expert: "The vast majority of the fighters who are part of al- Qaeda in Iraq are Iraqis who have shown little interest in seeking targets beyond that country's borders."
Muqtada al-Sadr may have been quietened through a deal, but nobody can guarantee that his pliant attitude will continue and the ceasefire by the Mahdi Army will hold for long. There are talks about secret operations that US forces have indulged in to eliminate al-Qaeda terrorists. The Son of Iraq program that saw the Sunnis battle al-Qaeda alongside the Americans has helped bring Anbar province under control. However, the crux of the matter is not the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq but the political dénouement in that country. It is how the two major sects resolve to run the country as an integrated entity without it being fragmented into three parts that will dictate Iraq's political course.
The worrisome truth is that, notwithstanding its weaknesses, the al-Qaeda leadership remains in place and continues to be a reckonable force. Its major base, on the Afghan-Pakistan border, continues to be effective in allowing it the operational space that it had prior to US invasion of Afghanistan, which might cause the coalition and ISAF operation in Afghanistan to end in failure.
Bush's obsession with Iraq had left the central point of the war on terror -- Afghanistan -- unattended and out of focus of the US planners. Thus, even though the first objective, the removal of the Taliban regime, has been attained, the second, destruction of al-Qaeda is far from being achieved. The coalition has been bogged down for the last seven years in a manner reminiscent of the Soviets. And the new regime is not in position to run the country effectively, a fact that was acknowledged by President Karzai in an interview with AP when he said that Afghanistan did not have a functioning government yet. In spite of the Coalition and Nato commanders' call for more troops, it was only the other day that President Bush committed additional force, which in any case is not likely to be deployed before January 2009. But more troops do not necessarily guarantee achievement of the aim.
In the meantime, loss of civilian lives in US aerial attacks on alleged enemy locations inside Afghanistan, most of which are conducted by RPVs, continues. This has caused the people in Afghanistan to be further estranged from the Nato and the ISAF troops. The Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda on the Pak-Afghan border exploit this to their advantage, and continue to operate with impunity.
This year the focus on the so-called war on terror is even more intense with America preparing to elect a new president. It has evinced greater interest than in the past only to see whether there will be a continuation of the Bush policy through McCain or there will be more rational considerations in the policy formulations under Obama, insofar as the global war on terror is concerned.
While we wait for a clear articulation from the Obama camp as to how he would proceed in this regard we are in no doubt about McCain's priority. He considers terrorism "the transcendent challenge of our time," yet puts his reliance entirely on military force to counter it. He appears to be a man with a hammer to whom every problem appears to be a nail. That is a recipe for disaster.
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