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Editor's
note: The opinions expressed in this article are the author's
and do not necessarily reflect the views of NDU, the Department
of Defense, or the government of the United States.
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bin Laden's statement Sunday after the first Allied air strikes
was mostly what one would expect, the usual denunciations of the
United States and "the chief infidel Bush," but did contain
two curious passages: "Our nation has undergone more than 80
years of this humiliation..."; and: "When the sword reached
America after 80 years..." Eighty years? 1921? Is he saying
that this whole thing is Warren G. Harding's fault?
Bin Laden is
talking about the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres imposed on the Turks
after World War One, which detached their Arab provinces and spelled
the end of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans had ruled the region
for 600 years or so, and brought varying degrees of political harmony
under the Sultanate and religious unity under the Caliphate. The
1920 treaty did away with the political order, and the Caliphate
was banned by Kemal Ataturk in 1924. The European powers saw to
the disposition of the Arab lands, the route to British India was
secured from Russian expansionism, France was given an interest
in Syria, and the Mideast oil supplies were safe.
Old news? Well,
we are dealing with people with long historical memory. Ayman Zawahri,
leader of the Egyptian Jihad, stated Sunday that his group "will
not tolerate a recurrence of the Andalusia tragedy in Palestine."
(The Andalusia tragedy is the end of Moorish rule in Spain in 1492.)
So the World
Trade Towers had to come down because some psychopath can't come
to grips with the end of World War I? Basically, yes. In bin Laden's
universe, that was when everything started to go wrong. Viewed in
that context, his plots against the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies
make perfect sense. They are products of this original sin, the
establishment of the political order of the Middle East by the Allied
powers 80 years ago. The founding of Israel ("the Zionist entity")
is an echo of the same Western interference. Iraq's annexation of
Kuwait in 1991 was an attempt to right things — Kuwait was part
of the same administrative division as Iraq within the Ottoman Empire,
so it is only just that it be reclaimed. Hence, Western opposition
to Saddam's invasion is a key event to bin Laden. He mentions this
specifically in his 1998 fatwa against Americans, and also
in his most recent statement in which he says there will be no peace
until, among other things, "and all infidel armies depart from
the land of Mohammad," i.e., Americans leave Saudi Arabia.
It is important
to understand these dates and events to comprehend the adversary
we face. Bin Laden looks back to what he believes was a golden age
in which Western influence in the Mideast was minimal and there
was no interference in Muslim affairs by "atheists." If
he and his followers could recreate that environment, they could
construct a theocratic utopia after the blueprint of Taliban Afghanistan.
The main impediments to that vision are the Arab monarchies and
autocracies that do business with the west. Bin Laden must first
drive out the infidels who prop up these regimes, then topple them
and replace them with pure Islamic states (that is, Islam ala
Osama).
Those who see
poverty at the root of all conflict should note well that Osama
bin Laden and the members of Al Qaeda are the products of affluence.
The September 11 suicide hijackers were more familiar with the discos
of Berlin than the slums of Ramallah. We are not dealing with politicians
who can be bought off with an increased minimum wage and comprehensive
national health care plan. These are idealists violently promoting
a comprehensive and exclusive worldview. Bin Laden said Sunday,
"These events have divided the world into two parts: a part
that espouses faith and is devoid of hypocrisy, and an infidel part,
may God protect us from it." As an Al Qaeda spokesman put it,
"There are only two sides and no third one. Either you chose
the side of faith of that of atheism." There can be no compromise;
this is war to the death.
The scope of
the current war is vast. It is not a struggle against one demented
man, or one radical regime. It is a war against an idea, an ideology
antithetical to our way of life and to the western conception of
freedom. Afghanistan is the nerve center of this ideology, a state
that has supplied safe haven to its theorists, and a test bed for
its practitioners. But the tendrils of this network reach far; to
Indonesia, the Philippines, western China, Chechnya, the Balkans,
Nigeria, and Colombia to name a few. It is a global web tied to
organized crime, narcotics, and arms smuggling. Its lifeblood is
money, much of which is obtained through illegal activity. But it
also does commerce in mercenaries, and supplies tactical training
and ideological indoctrination. This is not the type of threat our
national-security apparatus is organized to defeat, but it is the
one with which we must now come to grips.
The United
States doesn't formulate 80- or even eight-year strategies. Our
approach to problems is to wait until they get serious, go in, fix
them, and leave. We thought we did this in Iraq in 1991; clearly
we did not. Likewise with Afghanistan — after Soviet forces withdrew
in 1989 we were done with that country and let it fall into chaos.
We figured our friends the Pakistanis would take care of it, and
they certainly did. Their answer was the Taliban, which gave Afghanistan
more stability than it had seen in years. True, it was the stability
of the graveyard, but that served Pakistan's interests. And when
it became clear that serious problems were developing in Afghanistan,
the Clinton administration responded by placing sanctions on Pakistan
for engaging in nuclear testing and feebly launching cruise missiles
into the Afghan mountains. The single most significant diplomatic
move in the current conflict was lifting the sanctions and detaching
Pakistan from the Taliban. The Afghan regime has no hope of survival
without its Pakistani patrons, and without the Taliban the Al Qaeda
network has no cover. One hopes that when the smoke clears and Afghanistan
is liberated the United States will not revert to its traditional
regional attention deficit disorder.
The opening
shots of this war were not fired Sunday, but the instant President
Bush responded on September 11. The United States is now formulating
a new type of warfighting strategy. Military force is a necessary
and powerful part of the solution, but there are important roles
to be played by law enforcement, intelligence, diplomacy, international
financial agreements, covert operations, foreign aid — almost every
tool at the disposal of the government must be utilized to win this
struggle. It will take time, steady leadership, and strategic vision.
Bin Laden may die tomorrow — inshallah — but we have a long
way to go.
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