[Peace-discuss] The myth behind the war on terrorism

[C. G. Estabrook]

"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."

Published on Sunday, September 11, 2011 by the Independent/UK
*
Al-Qa'ida, and the Myth Behind the War on Terrorism
*/
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/

by Patrick Cockburn

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

© 2011 Independent/UK

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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