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"Al-Qa'ida as a global organization has always been something of a
fiction. Bin Laden may have wanted international reach but, aside
from 9/11, seldom achieved it. His propaganda has been accepted as
reality by self-interested governments and intelligence agencies
with an interest in exaggerating the al-Qa'ida threat to enhance
their own authority ... no US president can admit that he has fought
unnecessary wars in pursuit of an enemy that barely exists."<br>
<br>
Published on Sunday, September 11, 2011 by the Independent/UK<br>
<b><br>
Al-Qa'ida, and the Myth Behind the War on Terrorism<br>
</b><i><br>
The atrocities against America created the image of Osama bin
Laden as the leader of a global jihad upon the West. It was a
fantasy that governments willingly, and disastrously, helped to
perpetuate</i><br>
<br>
by Patrick Cockburn<br>
<br>
What was the most devastating attack by al-Qa'ida in the past few
months? Despite all the pious talk this weekend about combating
"terrorism", few will have heard of it. It happened on August 15th
when bombers killed 63 people in 17 cities up and down Iraq in the
space of a few hours.<br>
<br>
Such carnage is ignored because the US and Britain see al-Qa'ida
only in relation to themselves, and because all the victims were
Iraqis. The real motives of al-Qa'ida, often rooted in local
struggles between Palestinians and Israelis or Sunni and Shia, are
disregarded and replaced by fantasies about clashing civilizations.<br>
<br>
As the arch-exponent of "terrorism", al-Qa'ida is both less and more
than the picture of it presented by governments, intelligence
agencies, journalists and commentators. As an organization, it has
always been small and ramshackle, but, if it appears larger, it is
because it has the ability to tap into fierce local disputes. Osama
bin Laden may have wanted to launch global jihad, but the majority
of those who claimed to be al-Qa'ida since 9/11 have had a different
and more immediate agenda.<br>
<br>
In Iraq, al-Qa'ida in Mesopotamia, the local franchisee, though
never under the control of Bin Laden, was always more interested in
butchering Iraqi Shia than in killing American soldiers. The
Pakistani Taliban, closely linked to al-Qa'ida, still devotes part
of its energies to sending suicide bombers to blow up Shia villagers
and city laborers, even when it is facing offensives by the Pakistan
army.<br>
<br>
Al-Qa'ida's sectarianism is fortunate for the West. Many of the
attacks attributed to al-Qa'ida since 9/11 have failed because those
carrying them out could not build the simplest explosive device. Why
this has happened is something of a mystery since such expertise is
all too widespread in areas of al-Qa'ida strength, in central Iraq,
north-west Pakistan and even parts of southern Yemen. But the
knowledge is not passed on because the bomb-makers in these areas
fortunately remain absorbed in seeking to murder their Muslim
neighbors and show limited interest in spreading mayhem to Chicago
or New York.<br>
<br>
Al-Qa'ida as a global organization has always been something of a
fiction. Bin Laden may have wanted international reach but, aside
from 9/11, seldom achieved it. His propaganda has been accepted as
reality by self-interested governments and intelligence agencies
with an interest in exaggerating the al-Qa'ida threat to enhance
their own authority. Even the most botched and amateur bombing
attempt has been portrayed as if it were the Gunpowder Plot
revisited. Al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula commented derisively
that it did not matter if its plots failed or succeeded, because
even failures disrupted world air traffic and created chaos.<br>
<br>
Al-Qa'ida appears to have tentacles all over the world because
groups, often with different agendas but using similar tactics,
became its franchisees. This notion has also taken hold because
autocracies everywhere have an interest in pretending that their
opponents are all Islamic fundamentalists, hand-in-glove with
al-Qa'ida. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi did this with great success in
his relations with the CIA and MI6, partly because the Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group was led by veterans of the Afghan war, such
as Abdel Hakim Belhaj. India in Kashmir and Russia in Chechnya,
battling what were essentially widely supported separatist
movements, could claim to be fearless fighters against Bin Laden and
al-Qa'ida.<br>
<br>
On 9/11, al-Qa'ida's great success was to publicize its own
existence and to spark an American overreaction that played straight
into its hands. It provoked the US to overthrow the Taliban and
Saddam Hussein and become entrapped in civil wars of great
complexity. It has become easy in retrospect to blame George W Bush
and his lieutenants in Washington and on the ground for such errors
as dissolving the Iraqi army and the Baath party. But at the time –
though they have remained very quiet about it since – the Shia and
Kurdish leaders were all in favor of eliminating these two main
instruments of Sunni power and letting America take the blame.<br>
<br>
The Iraq war relaunched al-Qa'ida in another way. From the
beginning, US military spokesmen thought it was a smart idea to
claim that insurgent attacks, whoever had made them, were the work
of al-Qa'ida. The aim was to win support for the war in the US, but
in Iraq, where the US occupation was increasingly unpopular, it gave
the false impression that al-Qa'ida was leading the guerrilla
attacks on the US army. Local children started waving black
al-Qa'ida flags at US soldiers. Sunni Arabs thought they might be a
useful ally and the movement found it easier to raise money across
the Arab world.<br>
<br>
Al-Qa'ida has proved so elusive and difficult to eliminate mainly
because it has never existed in the form that governments and
intelligence agencies pretend. Its membership, even before 2001, was
always small and it had to hire local Afghan tribesmen by the day to
make propaganda videos. But scarcely a month passes without the CIA
announcing that its drones have killed operational planners of
al-Qa'ida, as if the group were the mirror image of the Pentagon.
Self-declared experts on "terrorism" appear as "talking heads" on
television, declaring that the elimination of some al-Qa'ida figure
is a body blow to the organization, but, such is its resilience,
that the threat to us all remains undiminished.<br>
<br>
Could any US government have reacted differently after 9/11? Was not
the popular desire for retaliation so strong that Washington could
not avoid walking into the al-Qa'ida trap? There is something in
this, but the reason this form of "terrorism" is so effective is
that political leaders are tempted to use the opportunity to expand
their power by highlighting the threat. They can portray critics who
do not go along with this as naive or unpatriotic. Necessary reforms
can be dumped amid a general call to rally around the flag.<br>
<br>
This overreaction to "terrorist" attacks is not quite inevitable. In
Northern Ireland after the start of the troubles in 1968, the
Provisional IRA became expert at provoking the British Army and
government into overreacting. When a British soldier was killed, the
collective punishment of a Roman Catholic district would follow and
young men rushed to join the Provisionals. It took a dozen years
before the British Army realized that it was reacting as the IRA
hoped it would react.<br>
<br>
Has the US learned a similar lesson? It looks doubtful because no US
president can admit that he has fought unnecessary wars in pursuit
of an enemy that barely exists.<br>
<br>
© 2011 Independent/UK<br>
<br>
Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent,
Patrick Cockburn was awarded the 2005 Martha Gellhorn prize for war
reporting. His book on his years covering the war in Iraq, The
Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (Verso) was a finalist for
the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction.
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