LONDON, 12 September 2003 — The problem in gauging America’s success in the “war on terror” lies in the very term itself. If measured by results against specific individuals and countries — in short, against identifiable enemies — the war has been pretty successful.
Al-Qaeda, the organization behind Sept. 11, has undoubtedly been very seriously disrupted. Although Osama Bin Laden and his second in command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, are almost certainly alive and at large, a host of other senior operatives have been captured or are dead. They include Mohammed Atef, Al-Qaeda’s military commander, killed in Afganistan in November 2001, Abu Zubaydah, its operations chief captured in Pakistan in 2002, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a prime organizer of the attacks on Washington and New York, seized in Rawalpindi earlier this year.
From Yemen to Saudi Arabia and Europe, other important operatives have been seized.
The Taleban regime that offered Al-Qaeda a base and logistical support in Afghanistan, was swiftly toppled. The terrorist organization may be regrouping, particularly in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but its communications and training operations have become vastly more difficult.
In Iraq, presented in Washington as Part Two of Bush’s global war, the picture is similar. American arms removed the supposedly mortal threat of Saddam Hussein in three weeks. Saddam himself remains at large, but more than 40 of the 55 senior regime figures on the Pentagon’s celebrated “deck of cards” are either in US custody or dead, including the former dictator’s two sons, Uday and Qusay.
But waging war against specific terrorists is one thing; war against the shadowy and abstract concept of “terrorism” is quite another. Al-Qaeda may be in serious trouble, but if it is disintegrating, its former parts are resurfacing and re-coalescing elsewhere.
Iraq, with its porous borders and utterly foreign society, is a classic illustration of the difficulties faced by the US. The very presence of American troops there is now a magnet for terrorists.
Simultaneously, the shadowy enemy is now turning to so-called “soft” targets like nightclubs, restaurants and shopping malls which American high tech military prowess can do little to protect. Last year’s deadly bombing in Bali, and the coordinated attacks in Riyadh and Casablanca in May 2003, are classic examples.
High-tech wizardry can eliminate hostile individuals and entire hostile regimes. But America is still desperately short of human sources in, and human understanding of, the countries and societies in which it hunts.
Sooner or later, too, it must address the reasons for the abstract entity called terrorism, which begets so many flesh-and-blood terrorists.
