Site Presented By
Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
Author Jessica Stern says the recent bombings in Istanbul and Riyadh show that the U.S. war on terror is deeply flawed.
Nov 21, 2003 | The latest barrage of terrorist attacks in Riyadh and Istanbul, culminating in Thursday's deadly bombing of the British Consulate and London-based HSBC bank, may be a signal that the war on terror is moving into a new and unpredictable phase. Less than two weeks ago, a huge blast decimated the Muhaya housing complex in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, and all of the dead were Arabs. Last weekend, terrorists hit a synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey. Thursday's twin strikes in Istanbul killed at least 27 people -- including British Consul General Roger Short -- and injured more than 400.
To Western terrorism experts, the most recent attacks raise more questions than they answer, and many of those questions focus on the effectiveness of the U.S.-led war on terror. The attacks are widely considered to be the continued work of al-Qaida, but how organized or effective does Osama bin Laden's terrorist network remain? Do such suicide attacks, increasingly carried out against "soft targets" and killing more and more Arabs and Muslim civilians in the process, indicate a disorganized, weakened Islamist movement, or one that is gaining momentum toward its goal of regional upheaval? Perhaps most importantly, has the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq helped al-Qaida's cause by unleashing a Pandora's box of Islamist sympathizers and would-be suicide bombers across the region?
Terrorism expert Jessica Stern, a public policy lecturer at Harvard University and author of "Terror in the Name of God," says a Bush administration focused almost exclusively on a military war against terrorists is failing the equally vital war of ideas in the Muslim world -- just as rancor toward the U.S. rises sharply in the shadow of the U.S occupation of Iraq. And that may cultivate even more fertile ground for terror attacks in the Middle East, especially in pro-Western countries such as Turkey, she says.
"In Turkey the level of antipathy toward the U.S. went way up in the wake of the Iraq war, which would seem to work to the advantage of terrorists planning attacks," Stern told Salon in an interview. "I believe we're not paying nearly enough attention to the psychological aspects of the war [on terror]. We shouldn't worry exclusively about people who are prepared to pick up a gun. We should be equally worried about people who are going to open their doors and provide logistic support -- terrorists do require support in the broader population. Iraq is absolutely pouring fuel on the fire."
The Bush administration has downplayed the growing insurgency against U.S. soldiers in Iraq, calling it a last act of "desperation" by Ba'ath party loyalists -- and some terrorism experts, including Daniel Benjamin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have echoed that view regarding the recent terrorist attacks across the region. Benjamin told the Washington Post that "low-value" targets like the Muhaya compound in Riyadh, a suburban complex housing very few Western civilians that was bombed on Nov. 8, suggest "pretty poor tradecraft" and thus a weakened al-Qaida network in the Saudi kingdom.
While the past week's attacks on a Jewish synagogue and British institutions in Istanbul could be viewed in the same light, Stern says there's no way to know definitively whether al-Qaida, having devolved since losing its state protection in Afghanistan, has weakened. In fact, she says, there's just as much reason to believe that al-Qaida is "recovering and showing new strength."
Robert Baer, a former CIA officer with extensive experience in the Middle East, subscribes even more so to that darker view. "I think we're moving into a much more chaotic situation in the region," Baer told Salon. "The old rules no longer apply." Baer believes that the longer the U.S. bogs down with the Iraq occupation, the greater the threat that such terrorist chaos will migrate to other parts of the region.
There is undoubtedly a growing nervousness from Cairo to Islamabad, agrees Judith Kipper, director of the Middle East Forum at the Council on Foreign Relations. But she is much more confident that the regimes in the neighborhood will effectively crack down on militant fundamentalist groups, whether loose local affiliates, "copy cat" groups, or al-Qaida operatives themselves. Yet, like Stern, she is deeply troubled by the apparent U.S. reliance on pure military power in Iraq, as the reconstruction stalls in a state of low-grade chaos.
"The lack of a realistic postwar plan in Iraq is really unfortunate," Kipper told Salon in an interview Tuesday. "It didn't have to be that way. Just about anyone could have told you that the Iraqis weren't going to dance in the streets [following a U.S. invasion]. A lot of Iraqis who could've helped us, we treated like criminals -- the scientists who could have really told us what was going on inside Saddam's regime, who could have revealed the weapons programs. We essentially made the Sunnis the enemy of the [new] state, but not every one of them was Saddam. The administration acted with arrogance and ignorance."
With its secular Islamic government particularly damnable in the eyes of fundamentalists, Turkey, Stern says, is as prime a target as any for al-Qaida. And while there is still virtually no way to pin down the terror network's broader strategy or its ability to organize and carry out attacks effectively, she says, the focus must shift to al-Qaida's greatest potential source of support currently -- an Arab population growing increasingly frustrated with the U.S.
Salon reached Stern by phone Thursday in Cambridge, Mass.
Do you see the recent wave of terror attacks, first in Riyadh two weeks ago, and the two subsequent attacks in Istanbul, as an organized effort by al-Qaida across the region?
Well, we don't really know at this point. My sense is that it is al-Qaida, probably working together with local groups, which is its modus operandi in general. The fact that al-Qaida and a local group have taken credit for the attacks in Turkey supports that conclusion, but isn't necessarily proof.
It appears that yesterday's attacks on the British Consulate and HSBC Bank in Istanbul were timed with President Bush's visit to London. Is this another indication of broader strategic organization, and is bin Laden part of the picture?
The timing seems likely to have been intentional, but of course we can't really know. In terms of bin Laden's role, al-Qaida's attacks have always been a combination of those planned by bin Laden and other top leaders, and local leaders who have to take care of fundraising and other logistics on their own, including target selection. So it's a mixture of franchise organizations and formal members of the international Islamic front, and local groups prepared to act in al-Qaida's name, which recruit various individuals. So what we call "al-Qaida" is really evolving, which makes fighting it militarily, and with intelligence, much more difficult.
What I'm suggesting is that we need to be focusing a lot more, not on just terrorists themselves, but on the broader population that is beginning to provide them support -- including in Iraq.
