|
| Jason Burke's recent carping attack on the Bush Administration's interpretation of the al-Qaeda threat has fallen flat. The attempt to demonstrate a failure of US policy has proven woefully inadequate because in fact, the Administration's interpretation is essentially accurate. | ||
| Burke's article is littered with inaccuracies. Early in the article, he says: | ||
[Bush] believes eliminating al-Qaeda will end the threat of Islamic militant terrorism. Though this is rubbish, as a close analysis of recent terrorist attacks shows, it is the conventional wisdom among most of those charged with ending the violence that we are now being subjected to. | ||
| Mr Burke's opening remark indicates that rather than debate Bush, he would prefer to debate a a 'straw-man'. To eliminate Al-Qaeda would greatly reduce - though not completely end - the threat of Islamic militant terrorism. | ||
Al-Qaeda, conceived of as a tight-knit terrorist group with cadres and a capability everywhere, does not exist in that form. It barely existed before the war in Afghanistan in 2001 destroyed Osama bin Laden's carefully constructed infrastructure there. It certainly does not exist now. | ||
| Burke, in attempt to fit the current bombings into the argument on which he has already staked his medium-term future (the hypothesis underlying his upcoming book), is building another strawman to hide a fundamental fact. Al-Qaeda is a cellular organisation which, in order to acheive its trademark, synchronised bombing waves, must continue to communicate and organise internationally. If it is not currently doing so, how does Burke explain the near-simultaneity of the Chechen, Saudi and Moroccan attacks, given that they involved intensive advance planning and logistical co-ordination? Sheer co-incidence? | ||
| Clearly al-Qaeda was always going to be a tough nut to crack. It will take many years, perhaps a generation to eliminate such a secretive and effective worldwide cellular network, and until then we will clearly see more terrorist attacks. Trying to explain them away as local groups of disaffected youths spontaneously organising will not help us understand the phenomenon of the past week's nine or ten bombings across three countries (not counting the two attacks in Hebron which probably truly were a co-incidence). | ||
Al-Tubaiti's story tells us two important things. The first is that the hard core of senior al-Qaeda figures operating in Afghanistan until late 2001 acted as a clearing house for projects that were submitted to them, not vice versa. (emphasis added) | ||
| One of the central problems in Burke's argument is his overdependence on this 'not vice versa'. Why must it be only one or the other? The prevailing understanding is that al-Qaeda, like any franchise, funds willing franchisees (such as Richard 'shoe bomber' Reid), to complement more sophisticated in-house operations. Such major attacks form the impetus for many smaller, local 'copycat' attacks. | ||
| Al-Tubaiti is a Moroccan 'freelancer' who approached al-Qaeda and offered himself for martyrdom. Initially turned away, he was later given supplies when he came up with personnel and a plan - then was caught after committing a number of blunders. Burke repeatedly asserts that an impromtu gang such as al-Tubaiti's was responsible for attacks such as that under study. That 'freelancers' could have run the sophistocated, multi-national network of dozens of highly professional operatives which were undoubtledly behind this recent trans-continental spate of synchronised attacks stretches Burke's argument beyond credibility. | ||
In Chechnya, well-established militant groups who have no real connection to bin Laden pulled off two suicide bombings that killed scores. | ||
| Note the careful wording: "no real connection." Does Burke know who orchestrated the attacks? That Al Qaeda has connections in Chechnya would seem clear from the fact that many Chechens fought for Afghan Arabs in Afghanistan (some reports say Chechens constituted bin Laden's personal bodyguard). Indeed, in an interview published in Der Spiegel, Herat warlord Ismael Khan complains that the Taliban have allowed bin Laden to bring Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens into Afghanistan in large numbers. | ||
| Just because Vladimir Putin and many in Russian security claim such a link exists does not automatically mean it does not! | ||
| In fact, Burke goes on to provide a case study of the supposedly 'not real' connections between al-Qaeda and Chechnya: | ||
The man thought to be behind last week's bombs in Riyadh is a young Saudi Arabian called Khaled Jehani. Jehani left his native land at 18 and fought in Bosnia and Chechnya. By the late Nineties he was based in one of the many training camps in Afghanistan, probably one controlled by bin Laden. In the spring of 2001 he recorded a martyrdom video, later found in the rubble of an al-Qaeda house in Kabul. Jehani fought US-led forces at Tora Bora six months later, escaped across the border at the end of the fighting and went to ground for at least a year in the seething, anarchic cities of Pakistan. From Pakistan he made his way, probably via Yemen, into Saudi Arabia several months ago. | ||
| Despite this case study, Burke appears to be arguing that the American strike against the heart of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was an ineffective way of fighting al-Qaeda because it increased the number of disaffected youth available for Jehani to recruit on arrival in Saudi Arabia. Burke provides no evidence that these Saudi 'recruits' were not amongst the thousands trained in terror by al-Qaeda and other groups over the past decade. Should these remote training camps have been left standing, in order not to 'radicalise' more youths? | ||
From 1996 to 2001 a group of hardened militants coalesced in Afghanistan around bin Laden. It is the local factors that are crucial, not the activities of an ill-defined entity dubbed al-Qaeda. | ||
| A group did not simply 'coalesce' around bin Laden in 1996 - a network was built by individuals such as Abdullah Azzam in the 1970s and 1980s, and whole organisations were brought in from the Arab countries (such as Ayman al-Zawahiri's Egyptians and Osama's Saudis). The solid base (Al Qaeda al Sulbah) formed out of Azzam's "Afghan Services Bureau", and was not simply 'dubbed' al Qaeda by outsiders.* | * Further information: In December 1999, al-Qaeda second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri was arrested whilst attempting to travel to Chechnya. Source: MEMRI's profile of Zawahiri. -TS | |
Just because the Afghan camps have been shut does not mean that the reasons that motivated so many young men to travel there have disappeared. | ||
| In much the same way that taking a gun from an angry man doesn't stop him from wanting to shoot you. It just makes it that much harder! | ||
| Every example in this following excerpt is historically incorrect, showing the sparseness of historical context underlying Jason Burke's attempt to blame the victims for the terror network's actions. | ||
There are two major differences from the pre-1996 situation, however. First, 11 September, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the crisis in Israel-Palestine, and the actions of governments and Islamic campaigners all over the Muslim and non-Muslim world, have led to an unprecedented wave of anger and resentment that easily translates into violence. | ||
| Let's tackle this point by point: The World Trade Centre was attacked previously by associates of Mr bin Laden, and indeed American interests and those of other Muslim and non-Muslim countries have been attacked repeatedly over the past decade. (Remember Tanzania/Kenya?) Yes, a war in Afghanistan helped bin Laden, but Burke is thinking of the wrong war in Afghanistan. The defeat of the Soviets led to the doctrine that superpowers can be expelled and crushed through pious jihad. This is why attacks are occurring against the West - because there is a belief that such terror will expel the American 'superpower' from the Arab Peninsula and therefore leave the local 'apostate' regimes ripe for overthrow. The persistence of American troops in Saudi Arabia ('land of the two holy mosques') and what this means for the legitimacy of the House of Saud, since the first Gulf War has, indeed been a strong recruiting propaganda device for al-Qaeda. What should America have done in this case? (1) The do nothing option was rendered obsolete by September 11 (and I would argue by many of the earlier attacks, which were essentially ignored). (2) Withdrawing from Saudi Arabia would have confirmed al-Qaeda's doctrine of the defeat of Superpowers by Jihad, elaborated above. America and the countries of the Coalition of the Willing correctly chose option (3) and moved onto the front foot, sending an important message to potential terrorists - the West will not be terrorised out of a commitment to the Middle East. Need it be said that this mess existed long before 1996? After all, as a youth, bin Laden's mentor Abdullah Azzam broke with the Palestinian movement on the grounds that it was polluted with socialist and nationalist (i.e. Western) impurities, and set out on the quest for a pure Islamic jihad against the soviet "Superpower" in Afghanistan. This quest was to prefigure al-Qaeda's ambivalence towards the project for a Palestinian State. | ||
Those involved may share many of the aims of bin Laden and his associates, they may even accept temporary help from experienced senior individual activists, but they are not part of his group. They do not carry membership cards, they have not taken any oath of allegiance. If these groups, cells and individuals are part of al-Qaeda, they are merely part of an 'al-Qaeda movement' not any structured, hierarchical organisation. This movement is as diverse as the many countries from which its members come. Unless this is understood, and a fundamental change made in the way al-Qaeda is viewed and combated, we will all suffer for a long time to come. | ||
| Al Qaeda never had 'membership cards' in the first place, and Burke can't possibly know which terrorists have met with, and pledged allegiance to, bin Laden. Not that it makes a great difference when al-Qaeda is known to have trained a very large number of more expendable agents (ie not core al-Qaeda members). | ||
| Ironically, Burke ends with the same sort of logical error with which he began. By saying that "Unless this is understood, and a fundamental change made in the way al-Qaeda is viewed and combated, we will all suffer for a long time to come", he implies that if it is understood, we will not suffer. This is as inaccurate as his strawman interpretation of Bush's statement. | ||
| The one accurate statement in Burke's essay is: "Will we ever be safe again? Sadly, the answer, at least in the short term, is no." We're stuck with some terrorism no matter what we do. Dismantling the bases and disrupting the organisational and communications structures of known terrorist networks is the surest way of combatting terrorism in the future. |