by: Husain Haqqani

Osama bin laden

The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has reportedly acknowledged that the United States may not be able to catch Osama bin Laden despite the massive current military mobilization. After almost three weeks of bombing Afghanistan, the Pentagon is beginning to recognize the resilience of the Afghans and their Taliban regime. Mr Rumsfeld remains confident that US efforts will eventually lead to the collapse of the Taliban. But the limits of American military power in dealing with the terrorist threat are becoming obvious with each passing day. The United States launched military strikes within a few days of the terrorist attacks in the United States, partly because public opinion in the US favoured military action. The political, diplomatic and intelligence elements of the war against terror have not yet been put into place. To Mr Rumsfeld’s credit, he has consistently maintained that the war against terrorism will be a long drawn affair. He has compared it with the cold war, which took almost half a century. But just as the long war against international communism involved many errors on the part of the US, some mistakes are already being made in the anti-terrorist campaign that has just begun.

Ayman al-Zawahiri

( Believed to be Laden's right hand )

The greatest mistake anyone can make in a war is in wrongly identifying the enemy. During the cold war, the real enemy was communism and the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. But many third world nationalists were pushed by the United States in the pro-Soviet corner by expanding the definition of enemy to include anyone who refused to comply with US demands. Communism and the Soviet Union were eventually defeated but the world, and the United States, paid a heavy price for the mistakes made along the way. The cold warriors lost their direction several times, prolonging the conflict and harming people and nations. The US should have focused on battling the enemy –Soviet expansionism and the communist ideology – and avoided any expansion of the battlefield. Anti-US sentiment in many parts of the world is the result of US entanglement in the side battles of the cold war that could and should have been avoided.

In the war against terror, the enemy is the global network of terrorists. The US believes this network to be led by Osama bin Laden. The war against terrorism will be won only if terrorism can be uprooted and its perpetrators identified and eliminated. Afghanistan has become a target of US strikes only because its Taliban regime provides sanctuary to Osama bin Laden. Much is wrong with the Taliban but their members are not directly involved in the terrorist attacks inside the United States that are currently being
avenged. If US strikes bring the Taliban regime down but fail in getting their real target, the terrorist network and its alleged leader, it would only be a spurious victory. Osama bin Laden and his associates will probably slip outside Afghanistan and find a less welcoming base of operations. Their network will have to pay greater attention to evasion and concealment. But their operations will probably continue. The US, on the other hand, will have been sucked into the quagmire of Afghan tribal and factional politics, with only limited gains in eliminating terrorism.

 

Mohammed Atef

(believed to be Laden's chief battle lieutenant )

US policy makers must not ignore warnings from the Islamic world about how the current conflict is being seen by dispossessed Muslims. Turkish Foreign Minister Ismael Cem said recently that the perception of the United States as being opposed to Islam is gaining popularity in the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden and other extremists recruit suicide bombers willing to attack innocent Americans on grounds of this perception. The US must deal with this image problem effectively and expeditiously. Unfortunately, some
voices in the United States are calling for ignoring the hearts and minds of the world’s one billion Muslims. Their argument is based on the assumption that Islam is inherently violent and Muslims are pre-disposed to opposing US values. But the US has never tried to actively promote its core values ---democracy, free markets, and tolerance --- in the Islamic world. Even now there is considerable confusion over how to deal with the Islamic allies of the United States in the war against terror.

The American public is in an angry mood and the US government is under pressure to hit back. The terrorists are an elusive bunch. Identifying and finding them is a time consuming task. Until that is done, there is room for hitting out at other targets. The US media, for example, is already targeting the House of Saud that rules the Arabian Peninsula. Until recently, Saudi Arabia was considered a key US ally in the Middle East notwithstanding its differences with Washington over the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The US maintains military bases in Saudi Arabia and Riyadh has been a moderating influence within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). But Saudi Arabia maintains its Islamic identity and sovereignty. Muslims respect its King as Khadim-e-Harmain Sharifain ---the Custodian of the two Holiest Mosques. The Saudi Royal family is one of the main targets of the network led by Osama bin Laden. US critics of Saudi Arabia, however, claim that Al-Qaeda has thrived either with tacit Saudi support or as a result of Saudi mistakes. The fact that some of the hijackers involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks carried Saudi passports has also been cited as grounds for criticism of the Kingdom. That such criticism makes no more sense than condemning Venezuela for producing Carlos ‘the jackal’ or the United States for being the country of birth of Timothy McVeigh seems to make no difference to American hardliners. While Saudi Arabia certainly needs to move toward political reform, the United States cannot afford instability in the Arabian Peninsula.

The condemnation of the House of Saud in the US at this juncture plays into the hands of the extremists within the Islamic world. These extremists are likely to point out that during the Iraq-Iran war, the US backed Iraq and kept the lid on criticism of Saddam Husain. After the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam was demonized and Saudi Arabia was the staging ground for operations against Baghdad’s Baathist regime. Now Saudi Arabia is being demonized and Pakistan is the US base camp for a war that is hurting
the Afghans more than it is hurting the international terrorist network. This is certainly not the time for the US to provide arguments for Osama bin Laden’s pathological hatred for America. It would be unfortunate if the current military operation destroys Afghanistan but keeps the Taliban and Al-Qaeda intact, just as the Gulf War wrecked Iraq but left Saddam Husain in power.