June 23, 2002
Anti-U.S. militants showing up all over
ZURICH -- According to a secret government report
revealed last week by the New York Times, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan not
only "failed to diminish the threat to the United States," but actually
complicated the U.S. counter-terrorism campaign by dispersing its radical foes
across the Muslim world.
The small, tightly-knit leadership of Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaida has been succeeded by a group of younger militants who have
formed ad hoc alliances with other anti-U.S. groups from Morocco to Indonesia.
These groups now pose the most serious danger to the United States and will
remain a potent threat for years to come.
This dismaying report confirms
what this writer has been saying in columns and on CNN since 9/11. A full-scale
military invasion of Afghanistan would prove futile; the correct response was
intelligence and police work, not brute force.
Al-Qaida's numbers were
grossly exaggerated by the Bush administration and U.S. media. Hardcore al-Qaida
members never numbered more than 200-300. Claims that there were 5,000-20,000
al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan were nonsense. These wild exaggerations came
from lumping Taliban tribal warriors with some 5,000 Islamic resistance fighters
from Kashmir, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the Philippines and Chinese-ruled Eastern
Turkistan, none of whom were part of al-Qaida.
The reason 12,000 U.S.,
British and Canadian troops operating in Afghanistan can't find al-Qaida - a
campaign that has so far cost over US$10 billion - is that there were few to
begin with; by now, most have slipped away through Pakistan. Instead, the U.S.
is getting mired in Afghan tribal politics by trying to maintain a regime in
Kabul that will take orders from Washington.
Last week's much ballyhooed
grand tribal council, or loya jirga, that "elected" CIA "asset" Hamid Karzai as
national leader was a wildly expensive charade conducted under the guns of U.S.
and British troops. Karzai's "election" has cost Washington $5 billion in bribes
and payoffs to Afghan warlords. As soon as U.S. and British occupation troops
decamp, Afghanistan will again dissolve into tribal chaos or fall under the
control of Russia, which continues to arm and direct the Northern Alliance.
Fury over Palestine
It's also becoming painfully clear
that Afghanistan was never the true epicentre of anti-U.S. militancy, as
Washington initially believed. The real hotbeds of Islamic resistance to the
United States lay in Egypt, Arabia, North Africa and Europe. According to the
leaked report in the Times, a loose network of anti-American groups have
surfaced in these regions, united mainly by their fury over events in Palestine,
America's impending invasion of Iraq, and opposition to America's political and
economic domination in the Muslim World.
Osama bin Laden, be he dead or
alive, and his al-Qaida movement have become irrelevant. In truth, they were
never much more than a symbol of hatred and defiance. But their message,
propagated by 9/11, has reverberated around the world. The torch of
anti-Americanism is being taken up by the "jihadi" movement - Muslim veterans of
the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s - and by a younger
generation of militants.
Sizeable numbers of anti-American militants
have been uncovered in Europe and arrested by local police and intelligence
forces, the only major success, to date, of the "war on terrorism." But more
hostile groups are springing up faster than they can be identified or
neutralized.
Call this the privatization of warfare. Many young Muslims
despair their own feeble, corrupt, U.S.-dominated regimes will ever bring
justice to the Palestinians, save Iraq from invasion by the U.S., or end what
they view as oppressive American influence over their nations. They are taking
matters into their own hands by waging a personalized war against the United
States and Israel, two nations that have become one in the eyes of the Muslim
world.
Forty years ago, the Islamic world regarded the United States as
its best friend and saviour. Today, the two are on a collision course. There is
growing fear across the Muslim world that the Bush administration is being
driven by backers of Israel and fundamentalist Christians into a modern
anti-Islamic crusade.
Powell sidelined
The leaked report
in the Times likely originated from Colin Powell's Department of State. Powell
is widely respected abroad as the administration's most intelligent and ethical
member, but he has been almost totally sidelined because of his opposition to
invading Iraq and waging a wider war against the Muslim world. Foreign policy -
particularly towards the Mideast and South/Central Asia - has been taken over by
a hardline, ardently pro-Israel faction in the Pentagon and the office of Vice
President Dick Cheney. Powell may soon resign in disgust.
President
Bush's National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, should provide balance and
nuance. But she has shown herself a rigid ideologue with poor judgment and very
limited understanding of the outside world. She is in way over her head. Bush is
not getting the sound advice he needs. As a result, he has been vacillating and
contradicting himself for months.
Afghanistan, billed only last fall as
a triumph for America and President Bush, is now looking less and less like a
victory and more each day like the beginning of a long, bloody struggle that
could and should have been avoided.
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_jun23.html
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