June 27, 2002	atimes.com

Front COMMENTARY Divergent views on the common scourge of terror By Ehsan Ahrari The burning question in three regions - Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Central Asia - is whether transnational terrorism has indeed emerged as a major threat a la international (or transnational) communism of the Cold War years. Even though Europe has not become the breeding ground for terrorism, the general concern in that area with human rights and European revulsion related to capital punishment have brought a large number of political exiles from the Middle East and Central Asia, whose links to transnational terrorism remain a major source of consternation, even for Europeans. In the Asia-Pacific region, it might still emerge as a threat of some proportion. In the Philippines and Indonesia, there are troubling trends that bear watching. But Central Asia might become a breeding ground for transnational terrorists within this decade. In the United States, however, there is no question that terrorism is a transnational threat. How to deal with it is an issue on which there are two schools of thought: the "middle-grounders" and the "eradicators". The first group argues for developing a whole panoply of solutions, from political to diplomatic, and military. Consultation with allies and friends in different regions of the world plays an important role in this frame of reference. The eradicators, on the contrary, have a straightforward hawkish approach to transnational terrorism: hit them, wherever they are, no questions asked, since it is known who they are. They also seem to be saying, "We don't need affirmation from allies, nor any debates. If whacking of the terrorists has to be done unilaterally, so be it." Until there is a meeting of the minds among top leaders from different regions of the world, attempts to eradicate terrorism are likely to face an uphill battle. Secretary of State Colin Powell leads the minority voice of the middle-grounders in the United States. One may also add the US diplomatic community as sympathizing with his position. As the only professional soldier in the highest echelons of the US government, Powell fully understands the nastiness of war, no matter how noble the cause. Thus, he has chosen the role of "reluctant warrior" for himself, as did one of his famous predecessors and his personal hero, George Marshall. But Powell became a reluctant warrior long before he became secretary of state, while he was serving as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and when president George H W Bush was about to wage a war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to end his occupation of Kuwait in 1990. Powell's approach to transnational terrorism is highly nuanced. While he fully supports the military aspects of defeating terrorism, he also realizes that terrorism will not be defeated through a one-dimensional emphasis on the use of military force alone. He advocates a multidimensional strategy of involving all elements of national power, including real and regular consultations - not merely pro forma meetings - with America's important friends and allies. In Powell's strategic framework, resolution of the Palestinian conflict is intrinsically linked with fighting global terrorism. The downside of multilateral emphasis is that the United States has to consider other nations' perspectives, preferences, and national-security concerns, and bring about necessary adjustments in its "war" on terrorism. However, the urgency created for the eradication of terrorism after September 11 has made any such adjustments well nigh impossible. So Powell has to take the lead on certain aspects of America's overall "war" on terrorism, and allow himself to be dragged by the hawks within and outside the George W Bush administration into supporting the hawkish aspects of that war on other issues. For instance, the option of ousting Saddam Hussein through military actions is not an issue that is close to Powell's heart. He views imposing of economic sanctions and insistence on reinstatement of inspection of weapons of mass destruction sites in Iraq as preferred policies. Indeed, it was by the demonstration of his leadership that the United States finally succeeded in getting the Russian and Chinese endorsement of "smart sanctions" against Iraq last month. That agreement did not end the argument within the Bush administration for toppling Saddam, however. Powell also supported continuation of dialogue with North Korea that was initiated under the previous administration. But he did not succeed in persuading the eradicators or President Bush to pursue that position. The eradicators are clearly led by such hawks as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Their surrogates, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, chairman of a non-governmental advisory body, the Defense Policy Board, have emerged as leading drum-beaters of the global nature of this threat and champions of a militaristic approach to defeating it. They regularly appear on various television public-affairs programs and repeat the mantra of the urgency of getting rid of Saddam, as if that is a panacea for most, if not all, of the problems related to global terrorism. But the fact remains that the US government has yet to establish any credible linkage between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi dictator. The eradicators are also of one mind in arguing that Yasser Arafat has lost his relevance to the peace process. There is no credible evidence, however, that their position reflects the real feelings of the Palestinians. Where does Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, stand on America's anti-terrorism policy? Rice, the Russian specialist on the Bush team, reminds those who observe her closely of the late mayor Richard Daley of Chicago. Daley was not known as a consensus builder. During heated debates on major issues in the city of Chicago he was known to wait on the sidelines. After a lot of bloodletting, when there emerged some sort of a consensus, he would readily become a party to it, claiming that he supported that position all along. Similarly, Rice is not known to air her views until she senses the direction of the wind. Since she knows George Bush so well, and since he trusts her judgment, they feed off each other's instincts. In that sense, she serves more as a coordinator than as an adviser, unlike her strong-minded and brilliant predecessors, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Thus, her role is more of a director of staff, making sure that the president is fully briefed on what was discussed at the committees of the "principals" or the "deputies" on transnational terrorism (as well as on all heady issues of national security) and that he understands his options. As a policy coordinator, Rice can ride the wind and shift her positions accordingly. But as a person close to Bush, she is likely to feel comfortable, unlike Powell, with the world views of her boss, including those on terrorism. What about the role of Bush on transnational terrorism? He is a conservative Republican, and a man with zero prior experience with, and little understanding of, global issues. He entered the White House with the determination to develop his own presidential style that was going to be starkly different from his highly controversial predecessor Bill Clinton, who was known, inter alia, for his proactive style in foreign policy. What Bush did not know, like all inexperienced presidents before him, is that there are more continuities than discontinuities of US foreign policy. Thus, try as they might, every president finds himself following the trodden path of his predecessor on most heady global issues. However, as a conservative Republican, Bush was expected to prefer a unilateral approach, a preference for high military spending and force modernization, since those are burning issues among US conservatives, and they often use them to berate liberals for their purported lack of concern for America's military. But then came September 11. Bush's predilections as a conservative Republican magnified hundredfolds. His predilection for unilateral action intensified, except it acquired a high military overtone. His initial approach to war against transnational terrorism was that it ought to be global, and it should have a military focus. He was right on the global aspect of it, but not on having just a unidimensional military focus. But Bush's attempts to sell his preferred version of tackling terrorism ran into problems for at least four reasons. First, prior to and during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), the Taliban-al Qaeda nexus - the chief target of the US military operation in Afghanistan - consistently characterized it as America's "war against Islam". Consequently, the Bush administration was faced with a two-frontal challenge of successfully conducting the military part of it, and remaining equally effective in handling its informational warfare aspects. Given the enormous technological superiority of the US armed forces, there never was much of a military contest with the rag-tag Taliban military. In addition, credit must also go to the unique and brilliantly implemented military strategy of synchronizing the high-tech and low-tech warfare, in which the United States' special forces played an extremely effective role in tandem with the potent use of air power. Thus, the United States scored a decisive military victory and, in the process, decimated the Taliban regime. As the operation reached a successful end, and the Northern Alliance emerged as the new ruling group of Afghanistan, the remnants of the Taliban-al Qaeda nexus adopted a guerrilla type of warfare, which remains a major challenge. The United States' record on that particular type of the war in Afghanistan is mixed thus far. The lingering question is how long the Bush administration will stay engaged in actively eradicating that nexus. A related question is at what point another equally significant crisis will demand a larger part of the United States' attention and resources. It may not happen in the immediate future, but the enemies somehow always know that the greatest variable that is working for them is the age-old short attention span (or the short engagement span, to put it precisely) of the United States. On the information front, however, the US not only encountered considerable difficulties, but it also remained on the defensive. One of the main reasons was the emergence of the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television network, which not only attempted to cover the war in Afghanistan independently, but also served as an unrestricted outlet for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's propaganda efforts. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, appearing on Jim Lehrer's television program TheNewsHour, brought to light the fact that, during his recent trip to the Persian Gulf region, he watched a TV channel that was solely dedicated to televising the Israeli military actions against the Palestinians. Tapes of violence against the Palestinians were shown incessantly, he said, without any commentary. No one really knows how much hatred that type of program is creating toward the United States in that part of the world. The second problem encountered by the Bush administration is related to the religious background of the perpetrators of terrorism against the United States. The fact that all 19 hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks on September 11 were Muslim; that the US was busy dismantling an avowed Islamist government in Afghanistan soon thereafter; that there was initiated a national campaign inside the United States soon after September 11 to arrest and/or deport a large number of Muslim and Arab residents; and that a significant number of them are still under detention without knowing the nature of the charge against them, gave enormous credence to the contentious claims of the Taliban-al Qaeda nexus that the US had, indeed, declared a war against Islam. One can only imagine the kind of uphill information war the United States was waging by recalling that, during the heat of the Afghanistan operations, a high-level decision was made to make available ranking Bush administration officials to appear on al-Jazeera network programs, whose job it was to explain to the Muslim and Arab audiences the real purpose of the war, and also to reiterate that the US government had no quarrel with Islam. There is no credible evidence, however, that their message found many takers in the Middle East and in other Muslim countries. The third reason Bush also faced difficulty in selling his version of tackling global terrorism was that the al-Aqsa intifada remained quite volatile in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine in the same duration. The Israeli response to it, especially the resulting death and suffering of the Palestinian population (the total number of deaths among Palestinians and Israelis since last September is reported to be 1,400 and 550, respectively) was also fueling the information warfare waged by the Islamist forces of the Muslim world broadcasting that the US had become an anti-Islamic force. The authoritarian rulers of Muslim countries - the repressive nature of whose rule has always kept their own legitimacy on shaky grounds - did not challenge the preposterous nature of the Islamist propaganda war. Besides, as anger and resentment toward the United States was on the rise, governments in all Muslim countries were getting increasingly wary about the implications of that anger for their ability to stay in power. The greatest challenge the Bush administration faces on global terrorism is that all countries of the world condemn it, but only a few are willing to adopt the US type of voluble perspective on that issue, which is an intermingling of militarism and highfalutin moralism. These two characteristics of America's rhetoric have no takers in the Middle East, save Israel; all takers in the highly repressive Central Asian republics, since the sole motivation of the corrupt rulers in those countries is to extend the tenure of their unjust rule; and a few tentative takers, save the UK, in Europe. Russia and China are supporting it for very specific reasons of suppressing their own secessionist groups - the Chechens and the Uighur - whose depiction as "terrorists" is not at all a widely shared perspective outside their borders. The East Asian countries, though they are sympathetic to the United States on the need to tackle terrorism, are not interested in maintaining a high profile along those lines. Obviously, Australia is an exception to that observation. In the case of Indonesia, which is a fledgling democracy, anti-US sentiments are so intense that President Megawati Sukarnoputri thought it best to keep a low profile on her government's policy against terrorism - condemning it in principle but not actively suppressing it within its own borders for fear of deleterious and potentially destabilizing backlash. In South Asia, India and Pakistan are supporting the US perspective on terrorism for reasons that are entirely regional and, inter alia, are also related to the obdurate Kashmir conflict. The fourth reason the United States is facing problems in building its anticipated support to fight terrorism is that it has attempted to link the war on terrorism with its near obsession with toppling Saddam Hussein. One can imagine how serious Bush has been on that issue by recalling that he dispatched Cheney on a tour of the Middle East recently to garner support from Arab leaders, at a time when television sets in the Arab world were incessantly tuned in on pictures of death and mayhem in the Israeli-occupied territories. If Cheney was unmindful of the bad timing of that trip, his hosts were not bashful about explaining to him the Arab perception of "the greatest threat" to peace in the Middle East, which was the imminent resolution of the Palestinian question. From the Arab side, the Cheney trip was a "deflecting" tactic at a time when the attention of their masses was fully focused on Palestinian sufferings. The Bush administration's ceaseless attempts to link the twin problems of global terrorism and ousting Saddam also became an issue of credibility within the Middle East and even in Europe. Undoubtedly, those problems were of no similar scope or significance for the rest of the world. Terrorism was an issue of transnational magnitude, and Saddam was a regional problem. Even as a regional problem, at this point in history, there is no powerful Arab desire to oust him. The continued insistence of US officials that Arab leaders privately support the ouster of Saddam has also become an issue of huge skepticism, even within informed circles in the United States. There is no doubt that the Bush administration's concern with transnational terrorism is quite real and genuine. But it faces three serious challenges, all of which involve Bush himself. The first challenge is his militant moralism, which he is unsuccessfully using to garner support among European allies and Middle Eastern friends. He will learn that most world leaders are motivated to pursue their respective vital interests. In the process, if moral rhetoric serves their purpose, they will play on it. Pure morality seldom motivates nations, and that includes the United States. He has to consider easing up on his moralistic rhetoric. Perhaps the use of private diplomatic channels is in order, which means assigning Powell an increased role. He is the most credible source of this administration vis-a-vis the community of nations. Second, Bush must stop linking the toppling of the Iraqi dictator with his consensus-building endeavors on terrorism. If there is proof linking Iraq with al-Qaeda, he must share it with those leaders whose support he so incessantly seeking. Only then may Bush be able to make a case for ousting Saddam. If not, he has to rely on "smart sanctions" and on creating the United Nations-sponsored arrangements for intrusive inspections of the suspected weapons of mass destruction sites in Iraq. Third, he must plunge his administration in the role of a mediator in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, a role that only the United States can realistically play. The global nature of transnational terrorism requires a global response. However, such a response has to take into consideration political realities of different regions of the world. An insistence on developing or applying a "cookie cutter" type of solution will only create disagreements and dissensions among those countries whose support the United States badly needs. The challenge of the day is not just a US victory over global terrorism. The defeat of terrorism will, indeed, be a victory for the entire world. Ehsan Ahrari is a Norfolk, Virginia, US-based strategic analyst. (©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact ads@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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