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Looking faceless terror in the
eye
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG KONG
- Almost before the debris from Tuesday's blast at the
United Nations' headquarters in Baghdad had finished
falling from the sky, some were blaming it on al-Qaeda.
This is the face of faceless terrorism today: whenever a
bomb goes off anywhere in the world, images of turbaned
clerics appear almost instantly.
And al-Qaeda is
not alone in the fraternity of facelessness. Be it
Jemaah Islamiya, the now disbanded Laskar Jihad, or the
Kumpulan Mujahidden Malaysia, there seems to be a label
to go along with any brand of terror.
The fact
is, the "enemy" in the "war on terror" is faceless when
it needs to be, but when a label or identity suits the
current purposes of government, one is quickly found.
Key decision-makers in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and the
Philippines have stuck to this line: that there exists
an amorphous threat against which constant vigilance is
needed because the state cannot see the enemy.
There is, of course, a good strategic, as well
as political, reason why the face of terror is
constantly kept at the background by government. To
eliminate the many cells and sleepers that proliferate
throughout the world, it is easier to assume the
existence of an invisible enemy. In the parlance of
President George W Bush, an invisible adversary
predisposes the US to "smoke them out" by all means
necessary.
Since a faceless enemy is in effect
devoid of combatant status, as it is not be a
non-uniformed unit, surreptitious techniques of
elimination can in turn be made routine.
What
makes sense strategically often also makes even more
sense politically. To begin with, many of the radical
operatives hail from not just any Muslim countries, but
Saudi Arabia and Egypt, hitherto what Fareed Zakaria
called "faithful US allies". As he wrote in Newsweek in
the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001:
"Consider the nationalities of the suicide bombers.
Almost all are from Saudi Arabia, Egypt or that
quasi-Saudi Gulf state, the United Arab Emirates. These
countries have been the fertile ground on which radical
Islamic terrorism has grown."
In not identifying
the enemy, the Bush administration, and those who
followed its tack, sought to collapse their "war on
terror" strategically and politically so as not to
embarrass friendly, pro-US regimes.
Within the
context of Southeast Asia, however, a faceless enemy is
assumed so as to provide authoritarian governments in
the region with a convenient excuse for stamping out
anti-government groups.
Still, there is more to
the issue than meets the eye. For it is equally true
that al-Qaeda and like-minded groups do not want to be
known as having any face, or for that matter any cause.
This serves to add an aura of selflessness crucial to
projecting their image as fighting in the name of God.
The September 11 attacks were carried out in the United
States without any message, for instance. Nor were the
Bali bombers any different.
However, if the "war
on terror" continues to be fought as if the enemy really
does not have a face, the implications could be severe,
in three ways.
First, a shield will be erected,
in this case by the Bush administration, to lull the
world into believing that there is nothing wrong with
the policies and practices of Wahhabism in oil-rich
republics.
Second, those countries engaged with
the United States on the "war on terror" will in the
long run lose the ability to separate truly radical
Islamic groups from general Muslim populations. Indeed,
while many leaders like to affirm that the "war on
terror" is not against Islam but against terrorists who
are beyond compromise, a prolonged campaign to weed out
terrorist elements in the Muslim world has the potential
to lead Muslims to fear that their very civilization is
under threat.
Third, as radical groups remain
unidentified, a sense of collective victimization in the
Muslim world would emerge, leading moderate Muslims to
believe they are open game to Western demonization.
Despite the claim of many seasoned analysts,
including John Chipman, the director of the
International Institute of Strategic Studies in London,
and Lawrence Freedman, a professor of war studies at
King's College, that the hidebound terrorists ought to
be fought differently, there is nothing categorically
distinct about terrorism that makes it entirely
faceless.
Like any guerrilla unit engaged in
asymmetrical warfare, this enemy does hide to maximize
the element of surprise before pouncing on its innocent
victims. But this has been part of the subterfuge of war
since the days of Sun Tzu.
Yet despite their
efforts to remain dormant and deceptive, radical cells,
operatives and networks have been progressively
uncovered. This flies in the face of claims about a
faceless enemy. A truly faceless enemy is a phantom-like
creature who leaves cold trails, not hot ones. But the
speed with which Jemaah Islamiya was linked to the
latest Jakarta bombings, for instance, was revealing. It
showed that the Indonesian government knows much about
that group's machinations and schemes.
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