Terrorism and world politics: conditions and prospects, Fred Halliday

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security to be held in Madrid around the anniversary of the massacre of 11 March 2004 will also mark exactly three and a half years since the attack by al-Qaida forces on the United States, what came to be known as “9/11”. It is now more than ten years since the first wave of assaults on western targets – from the attempt to demolish the World Trade Center (1993), to attacks in Saudi Arabia (1995) and east Africa (1998). It is necessary to understand both when and why this campaign began, and to ask two key questions about the future: how is the struggle with terrorism going, and what are its prospects?

In advance of the Madrid summit from 8-11 March 2005, a new openDemocracy debate explores the relationship between terrorism and democracy.

To find out more about the Madrid summit visit safe-democracy.org, register to receive information here– and add your own views to a developing dialogue!

Who is winning?

The first, essential step in defining the conflict is to assess the nature of the challenge. Much is made in western rhetoric about the irrational, fanatical, even barbaric character of al-Qaida and its associates – a moral judgment and expression shared by many in the Muslim world. But in trying to explain the actions of these groups, moral outrage – or generic denunciations of “Arab” or “Muslim” extremism – needs to be replaced by cool analysis.

Here, the core need is to assess the political calculations in the minds of those organising, or at least inspiring, the attacks. These are of two kinds: the rejection of western policies in west Asia and of states there allied with the west, and the ambition to seize power in a range of states, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. To adapt Karl von Clausewitz, terrorism is the continuation of politics by other means. The footsoldiers and suicide-bombers of the current campaign may well be fanatics, but the people who direct them have a political strategy. And their vision stretches over years if not decades.

This political logic explains the object and timing of terrorist attacks. 9/11 was designed, not to destroy or even seriously weaken the US, but to mobilise support for al-Qaida and its allies within the Muslim world. “11-M”, by contrast, sought to influence the politics of the target country, Spain – to punish a government involved in the western occupation of Iraq and to affect an electoral outcome. Attacks in the non-western world – the US embassy bombings in east Africa, the massacre of tourists in Bali, the attacks on shipping in Yemeni waters and on economic and political targets in Saudi Arabia – are designed to highlight the vulnerability of American and western power.

How does this emphasis on the political character of the terrorist challenge help to answer the first key question: how is the struggle with terrorism going? President Bush and others emphasise successes: the removal of the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and of the Ba’athist regime in Iraq; the killing of several top leaders of al-Qaida and its allies, and the arrest of others (some perhaps held by Iran); the likely thwarting of major terrorist operations in western Europe; and the development of new forms of counter-terrorist cooperation in Nato and the European Union.

Four other factors, however, counter this “optimistic” assessment.

First, very little has been done to locate and punish those involved in 9/11. The nearly 600 suspects detained in Guantànamo, and the at least hundreds more in undisclosed locations around the world, have it seems yielded little significant information. No real progress has been made in controlling unauthorised transfers of money to suspected terrorists.

Second, al-Qaida is not a traditional, hierarchic organisation that can be destroyed by cutting off its leaders or attacking its bases. It is a more diffuse, even postmodern movement, acting through inspiration and informal links as much as formal control. It benefits from state support where it can (as from the Taliban in Afghanistan) but this is not vital: its militants and sympathisers often act independently, and build informal links (as in Pakistan or western Europe) through kinship networks and recruitment in prisons, mosques and lodging places.

Third, the evidence suggests that the core purpose of the 9/11 attacks, to mobilise support among young, mobile and often educated Muslim males (the prime source for jihadi militants) has been successful. Moreover, the general outrage throughout the Muslim world about western policies in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq (to name only three) has been an invaluable aid to the jihadis’ cause. As the wars in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Chechnya and Bosnia in the 1990s stimulated the recruitment of fighters to the cause, so now the war in Iraq, and all that has accompanied it – Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, Fallujah – has led to many thousands of young people volunteering for training and military operations.

Fourth, many people in the Muslim world experience the approach of the United States since 9/11 as an attack on them. This is why some American analysts talk not of a “war against terror”, implying an analogy with conventional warfare that has defined timescale and a clear conclusion, but rather of a “transnational insurgency” stretching far into the future. This could spread more to regions already not immune to serious incidents, such as central Asia or southeast Asia, but it would in any case receive a massive boost if Afghanistan or Iraq collapses into civil war – a prospect that inspires Islamists across the world.

Wanted: a multilayered approach

These four factors in turn suggest an answer to the second key question above: what are the prospects of the struggle with terrorism? Three kinds of judgment – one negative, one positive, and one political – are possible here. First, the conflict, at its present level of violence against western and regional targets, may be more protracted than many leading western politicians are willing to admit. We are, in short, probably still in the early stages of the conflict with Islamist terrorism.

The lesson even of much more contained guerrilla and terrorist struggles, such as in Ireland and the Basque country, is that they can last for decades. The Islamist challenge is more widespread and in some ways deeper-rooted than either the IRA or ETA campaigns. Its organisational flexibility and reserve of potential recruits reinforce this judgment: and it means that more attacks are likely, not only in Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Indonesia, but more of the kind that hit New York and Madrid.

Second, on present form and despite a series of spectacular attacks, such a campaign cannot destroy or even seriously weaken the west. There has, it is true, been a widespread diffusion of fear that affects everyday life (and to a limited degree, business confidence) in the west. 9/11 has had an enormous effect on the American people, and European political relations with the US have significantly worsened. But the terrorist campaign has in no major way disrupted the political or economic life of western countries, nor is it likely to do so. The west will survive – provided it keeps its nerve, does not overreact, and improves in a realistic, practical manner its security and intelligence-gathering capabilities.

Fred Halliday’s incisive analysis and argument about world politics, terrorism, and the middle east appear regularly in openDemocracy:

“Looking back on Saddam Hussein” (January 2004)
“Terrorism in historical perspective” (April 2004)
“America and Arabia after Saddam” (May 2004)
“The crisis of universalism: America and radical Islam after 9/11” (September 2004)
“Bush’s triumph: three ends and a beginning” (November 2004)
“Turkey and the hypocrisies of Europe” (December 2004)

To guarantee access to these and all openDemocracy articles, please subscribe for just £25 / $40 / 40.

Third, political understanding has been woefully absent from the American response to 9/11 and even from other western leaders (a marked contrast with leaders of al-Qaida and its affiliates). To allow terrorism, an armed means of waging a political and military campaign, to define the state response is a trap into which the current US president has too easily fallen.

An effective response must be far more comprehensive, imaginative, as well as more protracted, than anything George W Bush offers. It must embrace a vision of change and justice in the middle east, involving greater knowledge of that region by western policymakers and publics. It must address decisively but with care each component of what I call in an earlier openDemocracy article “the greater west Asian crisis” – Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Kashmir. It must apply understandings and policies that respect and advance the interests of people living in these territories.

The Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero told the United Nations in September 2004 that the fight against terrorism had to have three levels – military, political, cultural:

“It is legality, democracy and political means and ways that make us stronger and (terrorists) weaker…We can and must rationally analyse how (terrorism) emerges, how it grows, so as to be able to fight it rationally.”

He is right. Only such a multilayered approach, underpinned by a calm determination to resist the impact of terrorist attacks over a long period of time, will allow democratic politics, principles – and citizens – to prevail.

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Terrorism and world politics: conditions and prospects, Fred Halliday