Published on Friday, March 12, 2004.
Alternet,
Counterpunch,
ZNet
Feature, ZNet Update.
by
Rahul Mahajan
Whether yesterday’s
attacks in Spain, in which 190 people were killed and almost 1500
wounded, were
carried out by the Basque separatist ETA or by al-Qaeda, they make one
thing
very clear: terrorism cannot be fought by military means.
After the first Gulf
War, and particularly after the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing, U.S. military analysts concerned themselves
extensively with the question of terrorism. An early conclusion was
that it is
precisely the extreme dominance of the U.S.
military that makes potential opponents
turn to what is sometimes called “asymmetric warfare” -- i.e., attacks
in which
the other side also has a chance of inflicting damage. For example,
Presidential Decision Directive 62, issued in 1998, says, “America’s
unrivaled military superiority means that
potential enemies (whether nations or terrorist groups) that choose to
attack
us will be more likely to resort to terror instead of conventional
military
assault.”
The Bush
administration’s response, involving a tremendous new wave of
militarism, new
weapons systems, and a newly aggressive posture in the world could not
have
done more to exacerbate the threat of terrorist attacks if it had been
planned
that way.
Worse, there has
been a shift in the modality of attacks after 9/11. The 9/11 attacks
and
previous ones by al-Qaeda, like that on the U.S.S. Cole or those on the
U.S.
embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, were attacks on hard targets,
requiring
suicide bombers and, in the case of 9/11, a highly sophisticated
operation.
Furthermore, the targets were ones of obvious political significance;
there was
hardly a more potent symbol of American economic might and world
domination
than the World Trade Center. Contrary to popular depictions, at the
time al-Qaeda was not simply ravening to kill any American anywhere.
That changed after
the Afghanistan war, with a decision made by elders of
Al-Qaeda in Thailand in January 2002 to turn more toward soft
targets. The first major such attack was the November 2002 Bali nightclub bombing
which killed nearly 200.
Just as with the Madrid bombing, the targets had no particular political significance while it is true that Aznar supported the war
on Iraq, 90% of the Spanish people opposed it, and they were the
victims of the
attack.
And thus we are led
to the reductio ad absurdum -- more military prowess leads to
more
terrorist attacks, more defense of hard or politically significant
targets
leads to more indiscriminate attacks on soft targets, and it is simply
impossible to defend all soft targets. Today the trains of Madrid.
Tomorrow the New York subway?
The progression of
events in Iraq under the occupation mirrors this.
Initially, one saw
mainly attacks on the U.S.
military. It quickly responded by increasing
the level of alert, and so August of last year saw numerous terrorist
attacks.
The U.N. humanitarian headquarters was attacked and Ayatollah Baqir
al-Hakim
was assassinated at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. These were still
aimed at
very specific persons or organizations and involved targets with some
level of
protection.
As Iraq
began to fill up with concrete barricades
and razor wire, the targets changed. Attackers who had earlier
concentrated on
the Iraqi police as collaborators with the occupation took to bombing
lines of
people waiting to interview for jobs as police. Cleaning women who
worked on a
CPA base were gunned down. Attacks against random targets of
opportunity
proliferated. The culmination was on Ashura, the holiest day of the
year for the
Shi’a a dozen suicide bombers attacked
processions in Baghdad and Kerbala (and tried to in Basra and Najaf),
killing
likely over 200 people.
The Spanish
government has a heavy political investment in the claim that the ETA
perpetrated these attacks, and there is some evidence in that
direction. There
is also much in the other direction, including a van found near Madrid with
explosive detonators and an Arabic
tape of Quranic verses, a claim of responsibility by an Islamist group,
and a
denunciation of the attacks by the spokesman of Batasuna, the Basque
party most
closely associated with the ETA.
But it doesn’t
matter. If al-Qaeda didn’t do this, whoever did it was inspired by
al-Qaeda.
The attack involves the same modus operandi, the same abandonment of
clear
political purpose for body count as the sole criterion. If non-Islamist
organizations come to adopt the same methods, the danger is only
increased.
So far, all military
measures in the “war on terrorism” have strengthened the emerging
archipelago of
Islamist terrorist organizations. Weakening it requires taking away the
political ground on which they stand. That ground is not the virtually
nihilistic domestic political programs of these groups. It is their
opposition
to U.S. imperial control of the Islamic world, a grievance that most
Muslims
share.
It doesn’t matter
whether you’re a dove or a hawk, left or right, concerned with the
suffering of
others or concerned merely with your own skin. Military means will not
work.
The beginning of a solution is the end of the twin occupations in the Middle East. Only after
that will it be possible to
take measures against terrorism that don’t worsen the problem.