The mastermind(s) behind the attacks on new York and Washington proved categorically that the individual has the capacity to wage conflict against the State and that however powerful a Nuclear Missile Defence shield may be, however many ICBMs with multiple warheads a State may have, however large and well-equipped its army, the single and determined within (or without) can wreak greater havoc at home than any enemy army.
The old-style military response such as the Gulf War, which enticed the Iraqi army out of Kuwait but left it, and President Saddam Hussein, intact, but at the same time created swathes of territory contaminated with Depleted Uranium which so far has caused 500,000 premature deaths among Iraq’s children, earn the perpetrator the title of “international terrorist”, not that of “world benefactor”. The same applies in Kosovo, a campaign whose legitimacy is even more dubious and one which contained illegal attacks on civilian targets, constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity. The reaction to these crimes, lamenting civilian deaths with crocodile tears while deriding them as “collateral damage” turned the resident indignation around the world into hatred.
With the globalisation of knowledge and ready access to goods and people, what happened on 11th September was expected by the US Secret Services, the problem being they knew not what nor when, but they knew why.
Operation Noble Eagle is the ten-year, patient response by the USA and, to date, Britain, its main ally. This response is a measured and determined procuring of terrorists and those who give them shelter, applying diplomatic and economic pressure first and using military strikes, with special forces, as a last resort.
This type of response promises two things: first, it should be far more effective in its aims, since the high-altitude and extremely inaccurate NATO bombing campaigns of the 1990s can be relegated to the annals of military history’s bad jokes. Trained special forces will attack the target, and hopefully will not cause “collateral”. Secondly, and of equal importance, the political fallout will be less dramatic, as governments could be persuaded to turn a blind eye to a lightning raid on their territory until it is too late. Damage to international relations would not reach the crisis management levels of the 1990s as whole countries were attacked and invaded.
Operation Noble Eagle is perhaps the only response possible at the moment which will not upset the delicate balance in the world today, since Pakistan is on a knife’s edge. President Musharraf knows that the possibility of his people rising up against the “Great Satan” (the USA) and in favour of their Muslim Brethren over the border (the Taleban are the result of a US/Pakistan joint adventure) is real. However, to give Pakistan its reward – economically, much-needed cash and politically, the much-needed Kashmir – would be to favour a tipping of the scales in the extremely fragile Pakistan/India cease-fire. In his speech, General Musharraf referred exactly to this: “The thing that concerns us most, the Kashmir problem, could be endangered if we make the wrong decisions now”.
By offering token support to the USA, Pakistan rehabilitates itself from the status of a Pariah state which angers Capitol Hill by buying Chinese components for M11 missiles into a regional friend. As Wendy Chamberlin, the US Ambassador to Islamabad states, “We stand by our friends who stand by us”. It will also be remembered that 600,000,000 USD of Pakistani debt are due for rescheduling talks next week in Washington.
Such factors are likely to have goaded Pakistan’s leadership into a pro-American and anti-Taleban wave, a faction they have lost control of anyway. The measured response, Operation Noble Eagle, is likely to be low-key enough not to inflame the more radical elements, and there are, in the Pakistani secret services and armed forces.
The alternative would be a catastrophe, as Pakistan could, more easily than most imagine, become the first Islamic State with nuclear weapons. Worse, Pakistan has an axe to grind against India over Kashmir...and India also has nuclear missiles.
Operation Noble Eagle is the only possible response capable of attacking terrorism without making the problem worse.
Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY
PRAVDA.Ru
LISBON PORTUGAL
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/09/22/15932.html
