COMMENT US terror report
misses the point By Ramzy
Baroud
The various data provided in the US
State Department's annual terrorism report for
2007 point towards some interesting, if not
puzzling conclusions. The much-publicized
document, made available on April 30 through the
State Department's website, makes no secret of the
fact that al-Qaeda is back, strong as ever. It
also suggests that violence worldwide is nowhere
near subsiding, despite President George W Bush's
repeated assurances regarding the success of his
"war on terror".
But will the report
inspire a serious reflection of the country's
detrimental foreign policy, and its role in the
current situation?
Let's look at some of
the data.
To start with, take Pakistan.
Al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-inspired
attacks in the country
more than doubled (from 375 to 877) between 2006
and 2007. These attacks have claimed the lives of
1,335 people, compared to 335 in a previous
report. That is a jump of almost 300%.
Then
there's Afghanistan, which was supposedly
"liberated" shortly after September 11, 2001. The
number of attacks reported in this country
experienced a sharp increase by 16% in 2007. The
1,127 violent incidents killing 1,966 people also
represents a significant surge of violence in
comparison to 2006's 1,257 deaths. There have also been many other violent
incidents around the world, including but not
limited to North Africa, and the terrorist
bombings in Algeria in particular.
But
this is barely half the story - or 40% of it, if
we want to be as specific as the terrorism report.
Iraq accounted for 60% of worldwide terrorism
fatalities.
Considering that the
horrifying violence currently witnessed in Iraq
was unheard of prior to the US invasion of 2003,
will the Bush administration take a moment to
connect the dots? Even a third-grader could figure
this one out: the US occupation was a major, if
not sole factor in Iraq's relentless bloodbath. To
right the wrong in Iraq, the US military should
clearly just withdraw, and Bush - or whoever next
claims the White House - should stop fabricating
pretexts to justify the prolonged mission.
On May 1, 2003, Bush declared the end of
major combat operations in Iraq. As he stood on
the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham
Lincoln a huge banner behind him bore the words
"Mission Accomplished". The New York Times then
wrote, "The Bush administration is planning to
withdraw most United States combat forces from
Iraq over the next several months and wants to
shrink the American military presence to less than
two divisions by the fall."
Instead, more
than five years after Bush's speech, the
administration seems determined to maintain a
military "surge", having added 20,000 soldiers.
Making no apologies for the war's contribution to
an increase in terrorist activities, Bush's
officials continue to rationalize it as a
commonsense response to ongoing violence,
conveniently omitting the US's own part in this
violence; the report doesn't classify any of the
thousands of innocent victims killed by US or
coalition forces as victims of terrorism.
Russ Travers, deputy director of the
Counterterrorism Center, stated on the day the
report was published, "It's a fair statement that
around the globe, people are getting increasingly
efficient at killing other people." While Travers'
assertion is undoubtedly true, there seems to be
no intention of providing any context, no
connection drawn to the US's direct invasions, or
indirect but equally devastating role in campaigns
of violence, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or
Pakistan.
But what the State Department's
terrorism report didn't fail to do was once again
identify Iran as the world's "most active" state
sponsor of terrorism. As reported in the
Associated Press on May 1, Iran was responsible
for "supporting Palestinian extremists and
insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, where ...
elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps
continued to give militants weapons, training and
funding".
The irony is that the report
further contributes to the US's long-touted case
for war against Iran; ironic because the report's
findings, if viewed responsibly, substantiate the
claim that the Bush administration's policies have
only made the world more unsafe. Wouldn't a war
against Iran hike up the number of violent or
terrorist activities?
It also remains
unclear how powerful al-Qaeda really is, and how
much of its capabilities were hyped in order to
enable the Bush administration to continue its
mission.
Consider the two occasions
al-Qaeda was back in the news recently.
News media cited official Afghan reports
attributing the recent assassination attempt on
US-ally Afghan President Hamid Karzai to al-Qaeda.
In other reports, the US rationalized its own
assassination of a leading Somali militia leader
Aden Hashi Eyrow on May 1 as targeting a key
al-Qaeda member.
It's not the logic of the
assassination that is key here, but rather the
fact that while al-Qaeda has reached a position of
strength that can penetrate several layers of
defenses in Afghanistan, the US is getting itself
involved in a regional feud in Somalia. Why would
the Bush administration be chasing al-Qaeda in
Somalia, as in Iraq, if the group is reportedly in
a powerful position back in Afghanistan?
More, if al-Qaeda indeed exists on such a
large and influential scale in so many countries,
isn't it time to question the logic used by the
Bush administration's "war on terror", which was
meant to weaken and destroy al-Qaeda in the first
place?
Unless, of course, al-Qaeda's power
and outreach is inflated for political reasons,
where every conflict the US is involved in becomes
immediately reduced to represent those who
support, shield or host al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda
inspired groups - thus justifying US military
intervention anywhere.
Instead of dealing
with the obvious truths which the terrorism report
highlights, the authors of the report have
resorted to other logic that places the blame
squarely on external circumstance, never holding
the US government accountable for its actions.
Finally, is there really a need for
lengthy reports that cost large sums of money and
thousands of work hours, if the lessons gleaned
are always the wrong ones, leading to more
blunders that prompt more violence - and more
terrorism reports?
Ramzy
Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author
and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has
been published in many newspapers and journals
worldwide. His latest book is The Second
Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's
Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
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