Getting out of the Quagmire
In order to counter groups such as Al Qaeda, the West must make better use of the `soft' power of diplomacy to accommodate Islam, and not just rely on coercive, `hard' power
Despite U.S. government rhetoric that often suggests the West is winning the "war" on terrorism, Al Qaeda remains a highly viable transnational terrorist network.
The U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq appears to have inspired more young Muslims to take up Osama bin Laden's cause. Perhaps the most pressing counterterrorism challenge for the U.S. and the West, then, is salvaging some positive political dividend from the fraught occupation of Iraq. A close second is making progress in Israel's brutal suppression of the Palestinians, which fuels terrorist recruitment and makes the governments of Muslim countries more reluctant to co-operate with the United States.The United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq produced a confluence of circumstances propitious to Al Qaeda: a strategically bogged-down America hated by much of Islam and regarded warily even by its allies. To many Muslims, stoked by bin Laden's rhetoric, the Iraq war is confirmation of Washington's intention to dominate Islam politically, economically and militarily; its intention to loot Islam's natural resources, in particular oil; and its inexorable support for Israel. Iraq has, therefore, reinforced Al Qaeda leadership's non-negotiable agenda, which aims for the debilitation of the U.S. as a superpower through apocalyptic terrorism, the overthrow of "apostate" Arab regimes, and the establishment of alternative economic entities to capitalism. The occupation of Iraq and the burgeoning Sunni Muslim insurgency that it has prompted has drained military resources from other areas of terrorist-related political instability such as Afghanistan, and executive attention from the security of the U.S. homeland, which is still Al Qaeda's prime target. The terrorist network has remained essentially dispersed while also managing to refocus operationally on Iraq and the Arab world. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, bin Laden's protégé in Iraq, has made a large political impact with relatively few personnel through decapitations and car bombings. Since the Iraq war began, jihadist recruits appear to have increased. Nevertheless, as of late 2004, while the goals of Al Qaeda's leadership remained extreme, the network remained subject to influences that were more atomizing than cohesive. The Al Qaeda leadership retains immense iconic power due to its rhetorical talents, improbable survival, and, in bin Laden's case, charisma — all of which he is able, despite his immobility and isolation, to showcase via frequent videotapes. Operationally, Al Qaeda middlemen can still provide financial or logistical assistance to local affiliates. These factors draw recruits and sustain militant morale. Groups like the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group (MICG), which committed the Madrid bombings last March, may coalesce around, or at least draw on, alumni of Al Qaeda's Afghan training camps, thousands of whom remain in circulation. Having been indoctrinated by Al Qaeda itself, those alumni are presumptively loyal to its leadership and possess basic terrorist technical knowledge. Such formative connections help Al Qaeda to continue to influence the strategic direction of the global movement.At the same time, since the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan forced Al Qaeda's hard-core members to disperse, the Al Qaeda leadership has been besieged and isolated, probably in western Pakistan's "tribal areas" near the Afghan border. It has had little operational control over increasingly far-flung assets. Law-enforcement and intelligence efforts have also compromised residual connections between Al Qaeda and local affiliates. Thus, Al Qaeda affiliates (e.g., the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group) appear increasingly independent in operational terms — a point suggested by bin Laden's merely applauding this month's terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Jeddah rather than claiming credit for it. Furthermore, ideological cracks could eventually emerge from differing agendas and degrees of commitment among jihadists. Methodologically, Al Qaeda proxies have so far just used conventional terrorist devices robustly, while the Al Qaeda leadership is demonstrably interested in weapons of mass destruction. Should that leadership push to use WMD, fears some jihadists may have of Western retaliation could compromise the transnational terrorist confederation.On balance, Al Qaeda's transnational character reinforces a strong tendency to decentralize, while its messianic cast and present strategic circumstances promote opportunism and expansion. These attributes yield geographical pervasiveness and self-perpetuation, but cut against the consolidation of the Al Qaeda leadership's operational control and ideological or even methodological uniformity. Re-establishing these attributes would require re-centralization, which could call for a new and highly vulnerable physical base. Defensively, the group remains better off in its present hard-to-detect "virtual" form.Despite the continued failure to kill or capture bin Laden or second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, the co-operative multinational law-enforcement and intelligence effort improved in late 2003 and 2004. More apparent jihadist threats to the Pakistani and Saudi Arabian regimes made their security agencies more co-operative and effective. Yet "hard" counterterrorism measures can at best contain the problem. The strategic objective of the global war on terror is to completely isolate Al Qaeda's maximalist leadership and disempower local jihadist affiliates. Fulfilling that objective requires Western policies that convince Al Qaeda's regional and local cohorts that the political circumstances of Islam and of local Muslims no longer warrant terrorism. This, in turn, entails a much better Western political accommodation with most of Islam — more a function of "soft" political, economic and diplomatic power than of coercive "hard" power. The current global strategic landscape — in particular, the violent U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Israeli—Palestinian conflict — hinders efforts to strike such an accommodation. Furthermore, the United States' current counterterrorism approach leverages hard, rather than soft, power in an effort to concentrate jihadists into a small geographical area where they are easier to target and less dangerous to the American homeland. Yet the decentralizing tendencies of the terrorist network inhibit jihadists from congregating in one place, while U.S. military aggression in Muslim lands swells recruits. Thus, the global jihad has been able to focus on both Iraq and other areas. President George W. Bush's counterterrorism policy is not likely to change substantially unless Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, the dominant voice in Bush foreign policy so far, formally reappointed early last month, steps down — if then. Even so, appreciation for the importance of soft power to the global counterterrorism campaign seems to be growing on both sides of the Atlantic. Bin Laden's deep and general sense of cultural and religious humiliation does not drive all, or even most, of his followers. Israel's brutality against Muslims, U.S. occupation of Iraq, American support for authoritarian Arab regimes, and economic deprivation resulting from Western colonialism are more proximate spurs to jihadist recruitment and activity. So ameliorating the Israeli—Palestinian conflict, sound state-building in Iraq, political reform and improved economic performance in the Muslim world, and better treatment of Muslims in the West — especially Europe — are increasingly acknowledged as paramount. More broadly, the effective application of soft as well as hard power would make the West appear less threatening to Muslims, most of whom would then be disinclined to regard asymmetric terrorist challenges to the U.S. and the existing international order as politically efficacious. To gain traction in implementing this agenda, however, the West will need to gain the confidence and co-operation of Arab and other Muslim regimes. This will be prohibitively difficult to do until Iraq has been stabilized and the negotiations on a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict, in which the Jews are not rewarded for their brutality against the Arabs, are underway.
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