The gravity of security conditions of Iraq and Afghanistan seems finally to have impacted on the George W Bush administration, with reports this week of a serious rethink of the conduct of the global war on terror now underway in Washington (see Susan B Glasser, Review May Shift Terror Policies, Washington Post, 29 May 2005). But there is evidence that the reviews conclusions will reinforce rather than address the problems it seeks to identify.
The problems in both countries continue to be severe. Iraqi officials this week announced the latest in a series of counter-insurgency initiatives the deployment of 40,000 troops and police to establish a rigorous system of roadblocks in and around Baghdad. As has happened so often in the past, insurgents almost immediately moved elsewhere. It appears that the Iraqi security forces are so widely infiltrated by pro-insurgency supporters and informers that any new offensive can be quickly defused.
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Such flexibility was also revealed in a wave of bomb attacks on security units in Hilla, 60 miles (100 kilometres) south of Baghdad. One sophisticated operation targeted police officers protesting the disbandment of their unit: it involved a bomber detonating his device in the middle of the group while two other insurgents killed officers who ran for shelter. The combined assault killed thirty-one people and wounded dozens more (see Saad Sarhan et al, Three Bombers Kill 31 in Iraq, Washington Post, 31 May 2005).
May was a particularly bad month for United States forces and their coalition allies in Iraq, with eighty-six troops killed one of the worst monthly totals since President Bush declared major military operations over in May 2003. It is hard to obtain accurate records of Iraqi security personnel losses, but one source estimates that at least 880 have been killed in the first five months of 2005, including 469 in April and May alone. Meanwhile, Iraqi civilian casualties continue to rise: around 25,000 since the war began according to Iraq Body Count, whose database records more than 400 killed in the first two weeks of May.
In Afghanistan too there has been an upsurge in fighting. A Taliban spring offensive, expected by some analysts in 2004, did not quite materialise; but this year there has been a marked increase in attacks on Afghan army and foreign troops, as well as in suicide bombings.
Juan Coles invaluable Informed Comment website reports a series of incidents from 29 May to 1 June that give a flavour of the Afghan situation: an attack on Afghan government troops killed nine people; seven Afghans were killed in attacks on US troops and a Nato convoy; a suicide bomber disguised as a police officer attacked a mosque in Kandahar (during a commemoration for a murdered cleric who opposed the Taliban), killing twenty-seven people and wounding scores more. Among the dead in the Kandahar incident was Mohammed Akram, head of the Kabul police force.
To focus or to expand?
These developments seem to have provoked the Bush administrations rethink, but there are different views in play. Some officials remain convinced that numerous killings and captures of al-Qaida leaders have crippled the networks capacity for transnational actions (a view supported by two pro-US presidents, Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan); other analysts dispute this by pointing to the many attacks over the past eighteen months (including Madrid, Jakarta and Sinai). Most observers accept that new leaders are coming forward into a movement that now has broader support, if less coherence, than in 2001.
There is also some shared agreement that Iraq is proving to be a remarkable training-ground for future paramilitaries. Susan B Glassers Washington Post report says that much administration debate has focused on
how to deal with the rise of a new generation of terrorists schooled in Iraq over the past couple years. Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to what one called the bleed out of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained jihadists back to their home countries throughout the Middle East and Western Europe.
The strategic choice suggested here is significant. If, as seems likely, the conclusion of the current terrorism review is that al-Qaida has indeed been transformed into a wider and more amorphous movement, it is possible that the response will be to target violent extremism rather than a more narrowly focused campaign against a core group. In that case, the new strategy will soon face two huge problems.
First, a number of movements that Washington may judge to be terrorist are also heavily involved in conventional political processes. Hamas (Palestine) and Hizbollah (Lebanon) come into this category, as evidenced in their recent election participation; moreover, such organisations have a record of social welfare and related activities over several years, albeit often in parallel with armed campaigns.
Second, the phenomenon of radical anti-Americanism continues to grow, largely as a result of the very policies being pursued and behaviour sanctioned by Washington. The Quran desecration issue is one recent example: although Newsweek could not confirm (and thus withdrew) its original allegation of incidents of abuse at Guantánamo in 2002, there is abundant evidence of the problem from other sources (including the Red Cross) which have been ignored in much of the US media. The inflamed protestors in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere have access to several of these sources.
In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here.
These problems are intensified by the fact that the Bush administration seems almost entirely lacking in any recognition of the impacts of its current policies in Afghanistan and Iraq from the killing and wounding of thousands of civilians to the regular transfer (rendition) of detainees to third countries for interrogation under pressure. These impacts are extensively reported in detail on al-Jazeera, other TV channels, in print media and innumerable websites across the middle east. When their viewers and readers hear President Bush talk of bringing freedom and democracy to the region, the inevitable result is a credibility gap even greater than Watergate proportions leading to a near-complete refusal to take anything the United States says seriously.
Two examples of the Bush administrations inability to understand the effect of its policies are notable. First, a persistent refusal to conduct a full-scale inquiry into torture and abuse of prisoners by US guards; none of the ten inquiries held so far has approached the vexed issue of whether senior military has sanctioned or even encouraged these practices, despite widespread evidence of systematic abuse that goes way beyond the activities of the 372nd Military Police Company at Abu Ghraib (Seymour Hersh, The unknown unknowns of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Guardian, 21 May 2005).
Second, the rapid expansion of the CIAs private airlines such as Aero Contractors, with many of the planes owned by shell companies (see Scott Shane et al, CIA Expanding Terror Battle under Guise of Charter Flights, New York Times, 31 May 2005). The CIA air operations, though not yet on the scale of the Air America operation during the Vietnam war, now involve twenty-six planes (ten of them bought since 2001) and include shuttling prisoners between countries for purposes of rendition; but their overall activities are kept secret from most sectors of US public opinion.
Passing the torch
The secret airlines and the brutal interrogations on one side, and the heavy firepower rained against Fallujah on the other, are different parts of the same process: the vigorous and often violent pursuit of the United Statess global war on terror. The key point is that such tactics are considered absolutely standard policy within the Bush administration, which displays palpable annoyance when any of them attract critical media attention. It seems at least possible that the administration may truly consider that such methods are so appropriate and effective that they should be applied even more widely against the new catch-all target of violent extremism (rather than simply against terrorism).
If so, such a move would miss the fact that the USs conduct of the war on terror is proving to be enduringly counterproductive. The impact of this conduct is likely to be felt in years or even decades, during which new, radical, and bitterly anti-American social movements perhaps modelled on al-Qaida but evolving in many different ways will emerge. In light of this foreseeable future, the achievement of George W Bushs two administrations is to light a fuse that will explode under his successors.
Further Links
Oxford Research Group
http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk
Informed Comment
http://www.juancole.com/
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count
http://www.icasualties.org/
Iraq Body Count
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
