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Harsh Lessons From Madrid
Patrick Seale Al-Hayat 2004/03/19
On 12 September 2002 - a day after Al Qaeda destroyed the twin towers of New York's World Trade Centre - I attended a conference at Geneva of the celebrated London-based think-tank, the International Institute of Strategic Studies. The world was in shock. Was this the opening shot of a Third World War? Never in two hundred years had the American heartland been attacked, not since the British burned down the White House in 1812. What did it mean? How should the world respond?
Among the participants at the Geneva, conference was an American arm-chair strategist named Edward Luttwak. His succinct advice for dealing with the terrorists was, 'Catch them, kill them, and don't listen to them!' His advice has since been followed by the Bush administration -- with disastrous results.
Unlike Dr. Luttwak, I believe it is vital to listen to the terrorists and seek to grasp what they are trying to achieve. How else can one identify the roots of terror? Vengeful, fanatical and murderous they may be, but to ignore their grievances is to bury one's head in the sand.
It is often said that the violence of Islamic militants is purely gratuitous, without reason or objective. To my surprise, Jean-Marie Colombani, editor of the French daily, Le Monde, expressed just such a view when he wrote on 16 March that the terrorists who bombed the Spanish trains had no programme except hate and no political objective save to prevent the spread of democracy in Muslim societies! In my view, this analysis is totally wrong.
It echoes the bankrupt claim of American neo-conservatives that the terrorists do not object to what America does but to what it is. Such Washington hawks allege that it is not the policies of Bush, Blair and Aznar that have triggered a violent response, but rather the terrorists' fanatical ambition to destroy 'freedom-loving' Western societies.
The message of the terrorists
How is it possible to hold such mistaken views when all the evidence points in a different direction? In my view, the message of the Islamic militants is simply this: 'If you kill us, we will kill you!' An angry core of radical Muslims is fighting back. It has had enough of Western and Israeli arrogance and brutality and has taken to arms. This is the lesson of the horrific violence in Madrid.
One way of looking at it is to say that Al Qaeda -- and also Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and others -- are striving to acquire a deterrent capability. They have stepped into the vacuum created by the failure of Arab governments to stand up to Israel and to protect their countries from Western pressure, bullying and wars. Al Qaeda and others are attempting to do what the Arab states, for whatever reason, have proved incapable of doing.
Terrorist outrages, such as the Madrid bombings, are cruel and indefensible. They destroy innocent lives and attack the very foundations of orderly, civilized life. They rightly arouse moral outrage. But the militants would argue that they are a response to the equally cruel violence inflicted on Arab and Muslim societies. Western sanctions against Iraq destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives. The use of artillery shells tipped with depleted uranium has driven up cancer-rates in Iraq to scandalous proportions. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the occupied Palestinian territories treat the locals as vermin, whose lives are of little account.
In colonial wars such as these, no one bothers to count the dead. Ariel Sharon, for one, has never been unduly concerned about Palestinian casualties. Long before he became prime minister of Israel, killing Arabs was the principal focus of his bloodstained career.
Did George W. Bush and Tony Blair imagine that they could storm into Iraq, ransack the country, kill some twenty thousand people, both civilian and military, wound another twenty or thirty thousand, round up ten thousand 'suspects', and not provoke a violent reaction? How can it have come as a surprise? Is not the lesson of history that occupation breeds insurrection?
Blair's responsibility is particularly heavy because Bush would have hesitated to go to war without him. Blair had a chance to pull Bush back from the brink. But he stifled his own doubts, wanting at all costs to preserve the Anglo-American partnership. No doubt, he enjoyed the brief thrill of projecting global power - at least until the party turned sour. Terrorism is today a far bigger threat than before the Iraq war, and Britain, thanks to Blair, is gravely exposed.
In the hope of catching Osama bin Laden, U.S. Special Forces have now launched a search and destroy operation - 'Mountain Storm' -- in the tribal areas of the Afghan-Pakistan border. Trailing in the polls, Bush needs some good news before next November's election. What matter if a few more innocent Afghans are killed?
In Israel this week, Sharon launched another murderous military operation against the densely populated villages and refugee camps of Gaza. This is his stock response to the suicide bombers, of which the latest killed ten people at the Israeli port of Ashdod, to add to the 900 Israelis killed in the current Intifada. Israel has killed some 3,000 Palestinians, including many children. Yet Sharon clings stubbornly to the belief that he can defeat and subdue the Palestinians by military force. He has no interest in negotiations, because his secret conviction is that violence, however ugly, serves his purpose since it allows him to seize more territory on the West Bank.
Are Israelis really surprised that desperate Palestinians turn themselves into human bombs? Did they believe they could steal the Palestinians' land, cut down their orchards, destroy their houses, herd their young men into concentration camps, shoot their children, smash their towns and villages, and not be hit back?
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the worldwide manhunt, which is Bush's 'war on terror', and Israel's pitiless treatment of the Palestinians -- these are the three great contemporary sources of Arab and Muslim anger. Anger fuels the terrorist response. Washington, in turn, has its own fanatical militants: the neo-cons who pressed most eagerly for war are those who imagined that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would allow Sharon to impose on the Palestinians the harsh terms of his choice.
A radical change of policy is required
What is to be done? The terrorist emergency is now worldwide. It is changing the quality of life in many countries and absorbing untold energies and resources. It is plain that police methods and repression alone will not defuse it.
However distasteful this may be to the governments of the United States, Britain and Israel, a political negotiation with the militants is now essential. If these governments are not prepared to negotiate, their electorates must remove them, as Aznar has been removed in Spain. Bush and Blair deserve to be rejected by the voters because of their fraudulent and illegal war. That the Israelis elected a serial killer as their prime minister shows how far they have lost their way and how urgently they need to change course.
A truce must be called with radical Islam. Painful but essential political decisions must then be taken to address the most glaring Arab and Muslim grievances. The world must impose a long-overdue settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a running sore which, more than any other, has infected relations between the Arabs and the West.
American and British troops must leave Iraq with the transfer of sovereignty in July. The United Nations must be given the support and the money it needs to help a unitary Iraq back on its feet. Most American bases in the region should be dismantled and their troops removed to more discreet 'over the horizon' locations. The 'war on terror' must be wound down, if only because it is a great terrorist recruiting sergeant.
Above all, seeking reconciliation rather than confrontation, the West must engage in a sincere dialogue with Islam in all its forms, including the most radical.
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