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No military solution to terrorism
The US is winding down its hunt for Bin Laden and his virtual state
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday January 09 2002
The Guardian
Tony Blair, trying not to look triumphant as he was flanked by the
Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and surrounded by British troops at Bagram
airbase on Monday, roundly dismissed those who were sceptical about
what military action could achieve.
As American bombers continue to bomb targets identified as remnants of
Taliban and al-Qaida forces, and their ammunition dumps, risking more
civilian casualties, he added that the war would not be over until
Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar were caught.
This, after all, was the prime objective emphasised repeatedly by both
Bush and Blair. Yet with the mullah reported to have escaped on a
motorbike and Bin Laden, at the time of writing, nowhere to be seen,
the Pentagon now says it is winding down its search for them.
On Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesman said American forces were going to
stop "chasing the shadows" of Bin Laden and Omar. Rear Admiral John
Stufflebeem declared that American-led forces were focusing more on
finding and attacking remaining Taliban and al-Qaida members.
The bombing continues long after "enemy forces", by Blair and Bush's
own admission, have been routed. Bombing will not bring anyone to
account, or to justice - the words used by Bush and Blair - nor will
it provide them with more intelligence about any threat still posed by
al-Qaida.
As Donald Anderson, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee
has said, now that the main battle is over, continuing air strikes
seem very much like revenge tactics. "If we value Afghan life as much
as American," he says pointedly, "we will have to be extremely
careful."
Now the bombing has become so routine that it is relegated to the
inside pages of newspapers or not recorded at all, in much the same
way as the continued bombing of Iraq by American and British pilots
over the southern and northern "no-fly" zones. But is the world a
safer place? Is the outcome of the military campaign in Afghanistan a
victory for civilization, as Bush-Blair rhetoric maintains?
The American military have been given a huge boost, and the promise of
a large budgetary increase to procure new and more powerful bombs,
including bunker-busters whose performance in Afghanistan has
disappointed the Pentagon. Their tails up, they are threatening to
strike at other easy targets.
But this new-found enthusiasm for military strikes ignores a broader
point about western policy, made succinctly by Field Marshal Lord
Inge, a former chief of defence staff, just before the Christmas
recess. The "ongoing crisis between Israel and the Palestinians," he
told the Lords, "deserves as much direct attention from America and
Europe as does the war against international terrorism. While there is
no sign of establishing a viable Palestinian state, the terrorists of
the al-Qaida organisation will continue to believe that they have a
cause."
Even complete military success in Afghanistan will not destroy the
terrorist threat. Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, senior staff at
the International Institute for Strategic Studies, question whether
advances in communications and encryption - coupled with increasingly
good tradecraft - obviates the need for al-Qaida to have any
territorial base. In the latest issue of the IISS journal, Survival,
they ask: "Can al-Qaida, or its successor, make the transition from
from quasi-virtual to completely virtual state?"
Meanwhile, actual Middle East states are growing economically at
two-thirds the rate of other developing countries, even more slowly
than sub-Saharan Africa. In 1980, Muslims accounted for 18% of the
world's population. If present trends continue, they will constitute
30% by 2025, say the authors. A "new youth bulge" will hit countries
throughout the Arab world and beyond.
"There is little reason to believe that ruling elites will offer a
route to political self-expression that does not go through the mosque
and madrassa," they say. "An integral part of this religious
orientation will be resentment, even hatred of western societies. The
globalisation juggernaut of cultural intrusion into these traditional
societies will certainly fuel this hatred and make religious terrorism
even more likely."
There is nothing inevitable about this. Much will depend on the
increasingly uncertain relationship between the west and autocratic
Arab regimes, notably Saudi Arabia. It will depend on their economic
and social policies. One thing is certain - as Britain's top military
figures appreciate even if their counterparts in the Pentagon do not -
there is no military solution to the fight against terrorism, and no
military deterrent to prevent it. This is the context in which the
military action in Afghanistan praised by Blair must be seen.
· Richard Norton-Taylor is the Guardian's security editor.
richard.norton-taylor@ guardian.co.uk
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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