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2 Fighting the global
insurgency By Alan Boyd
There are no signs that the United States'
much-vaunted "war on terrorism" is having any
impact on the spread of the global scourge,
according to the latest US State Department
findings.
On the contrary, there were 25%
more attacks last year than in 2005 and 40% more
people died in terrorism incidents - a total of
20,498, based on the number of confirmed
fatalities.
About 45% of these attacks
occurred in Iraq, the country that is
the
focus of the anti-terrorism "war" because of its
supposed links with al-Qaeda and allegations, now
discredited, of Baghdad's plans to build weapons
of mass destruction.
Iraq witnessed almost
twice as many bombings and other violent incidents
last year, largely because extremists were using
chemical weapons and suicide bombers to target
crowds, the report says. Afghanistan, the other
main terrorism front line, saw a similar increase.
Critics of the invasion of Iraq - and to a
lesser extent of Afghanistan - contend that a
terrorism problem warranting forcible intervention
did not exist until Washington and its
now-dwindling coalition sent in the troops and
became a target for attacks.
The State
Department's own report for 2002, the year before
the invasion took place, says that only "small
numbers of highly placed al-Qaeda militants" were
in Baghdad and other areas of Iraq, though
"several hundred" operatives were fighting with
extremists in the remote northeastern corner of
Iraqi Kurdistan.
"In the past year,
al-Qaeda operatives in northern Iraq concocted
suspected chemical weapons under the direction of
senior al-Qaeda associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and
tried to smuggle them into Russia, Western Europe,
and the United States for terrorist operations,"
it says.
By 2006, the latest report
states, al-Qaeda elements, affiliated terrorist
organizations, insurgent groups, militias,
sectarian death squads and criminal networks were
all "taking advantage of Iraq's deteriorating
security situation".
The study warns that
al-Qaeda, still identified as the biggest threat,
has reacted to the US-led campaign by moving
toward "guerrilla" violence by local recruits
rather than "expeditionary" attacks on Western
targets.
"A deeper trend is the shift in
the nature of terrorism, from traditional
international terrorism of the late 20th century
into a new form of transnational non-state warfare
that resembles a form of global insurgency," the
State Department says.
Whether the US
strategy can cope with this shift is debatable as
long it relies on a powerful military presence -
partly for domestic political motivations - for a
job that could be handled far more effectively by
other services.
Police officers worldwide
have arrested five times as many suspects linked
to al-Qaeda as military operations have captured
or killed: in Asia, excluding Iraq and
Afghanistan, the proportion rounded up by police
is believed to be as high as 70%.
Washington handed out $3.5 billion of
military assistance to states "on the front line
in the war against terrorism" while the Iraq
operation was being executed in 2003, but only
$121 million for other forms of operational
anti-terrorism aid. The latter included $52
million for the establishment of a Center for
Anti-Terrorism and Security Training that was
expected to train more than 7,500 police, but only
those from the United States and other countries
involved in the Iraqi coalition.
In Asia,
the Philippines, widely regarded as one of the key
Southeast Asian centers of extremist recruitment
and training, was given $20 million of military
assistance for anti-terrorism purposes but only $2
million for the development of a law-enforcement
capability.
While this says much for the
strongman image that US President George W Bush
was trying to project in Iraq, there was also a
more mundane reason for the disparity: Section 660
of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits
the use of US funding for the training of police.
Exemptions can be secured, but often are not
sought because of the legwork and paper trail
required. Each block of funding must be justified
to legislators and approved by Congress.
"To develop policies and programs under a
prohibition is impossible. We have to ask Congress
for an exception to every change in
circumstances," a Department of Justice official
complained in a report carried by the Heritage
Foundation.
Aid is often given a military
emphasis because it is tailored to foreign-policy
goals. In Indonesia it has been dangled as a lure
for
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