September 09, 2014
I have the uncomfortable feeling this week that we may be at
the beginning of a replay of that period in 2001-2003 when the United States
launched a “global war on terror” to defeat Al-Qaeda and its brand of
terrorism. A decade later, the U.S. and U.K. led an attack on Iraq with a
“coalition of the willing,” and now, another decade on, we hear the same
language and see the same military movements from the United States as it
responds to the threat to all of us posed by the “Islamic State” (IS) in Syria-Iraq.
And what did Al-Qaeda do this week, more than
two decades after being at the receiving end of the global war on terror
(GWOT), one of the greatest and most expensive global military adventures of
all time? This week Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri announced the establishment
of a new branch of his organization in India, aiming to purify that land from
non-Muslims in line with Al-Qaeda’s philosophy of fighting a defensive jihad to
protect and preserve Islamic societies. So as the United States and the United
Kingdom were rekindling the GWOT in Syria-Iraq to fight IS, thus returning to
the military tactics of two decades ago that have failed to defeat
Al-Qaeda-type militancy, Al-Qaeda itself and its many localized copycats,
franchises and spinoffs have continued to expand.
If Joe Biden is serious about chasing the IS “to
the gates of hell” — a worthy goal — and Barack Obama is serious about
committing to years of combat to defeat IS and its derivatives, someone should
tell both these well-meaning men that this is a good moment to pause this rerun
of the old GWOT film and ask a simple question: Can we assess with some
honesty the balance sheet of the last three decades or so during which the
United States and allies relentlessly have militarily attacked Al-Qaeda and
sister organizations around the world, only to reach this point where this
brand of extremism Islamist militancy and terror is spreading around the world
almost as fast as American fast food chains?
The balance sheet is very clear for anyone
honest enough to face reality. Salafist, takfiri and jihadi militant groups
that all connect somehow to the Al-Qaeda worldview have rooted themselves
organizationally in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Mali, Nigeria,
Syria, Libya, Kenya, Tunisia and Iraq, along with dozens of smaller operations
or pockets of like-minded militants in other countries.
Dear Mr. President and Vice President of the
United States, and dear Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: before you
relaunch a new global war on terror and another funky coalition of countries to
fight the “Islamic State” in Syria-Iraq, please note that the last three
decades of your global war on terror have sparked the greatest expansion of
Islamist militancy and terrorism in modern history. This is partly, maybe
largely, because your military actions in Islamic lands usually destabilize
those lands, allow your enemy groups to organize and take root, and also
provide the greatest magnet that attracts mostly fringe and lost young men to
give meaning to their lives by going to distant lands to join what they see as
a defensive jihad to save Islamic societies from your aggression.
Military action certainly has some role in a
wider political, economic and social assault on freak extremists and terrorists
like Al-Qaeda and their derivatives like IS. Yet if military strikes after
three decades have only expanded the reach and territorial control of these
movements, isn’t it about time that we all resort to rational analysis to
address the root causes of this threat that haunts us, instead of falling back
on the failed legacy of George W. Bush-vintage sophomoric emotional jingoism
and flag-waving militarism that only demean the otherwise fine values of the
American flag? When does logic play a role in this process? When does adult
intellectual and analytical maturity rear its head to trump the destructive
consequences of the child-like, under-developed impulsiveness of perplexed
politicians who need to show their manhood on the global stage?
Al-Qaeda, IS and many other such groups emerged
from a modern historical process that combined the brutality and developmental
failures of Arab-Asian dictatorships with non-stop
American-Western-Israeli-Russian aggression in Islamic-majority lands. The
GWOT, with its armed invasions, regime changes, drone fleets and other means,
has only sustained and even expanded the Al-Qaeda/“Islamic State” phenomenon,
because the twin drivers of Arab-Asian autocracy and foreign aggression remain
virtually untouched.
A “coalition of the willing” that mainly
comprises Anglo-American militaries that shatter Arab lands, along with Arab
and Asian autocrats in whose jails the seeds of Al-Qaeda were incubated in the
1980s, is not a serious venture to fight Islamist military and extremism,
because such a combination of states is the very force that has given birth and
sustenance to them.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and director of the
Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the
American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2014 Rami G.
Khouri—distributed by Agence Global