Difficult times in post-9-11 world

The impact on the Middle East of the 9-11 Commission Report on the 2001 attacks against the United States is likely to continue the existing trends of the “war on terror”: active unilateral Anglo-American warfare when deemed appropriate, heightened security cooperation and operations in the Middle East, stringent security measures within the United States that will further degrade American-Middle Eastern ties, and a very weak focus on underlying issues that breed anti-American sentiments and terrorism in the Middle East. This signals difficult times ahead for both the United States and the Middle East, and also for others in the world – to judge by the Madrid train attacks and other recent terror-related threats or arrests in Europe.

The limits of the report mirror the broad American approach to dealing with the 9-11 terror phenomenon, an approach that has scored some successes in recent years but also seems to have expanded the appeal and operating arenas of terrorists who target the United States, Arabs and others. The commission report, like U.S. policy to date, includes a heavy focus on technical security, intelligence and the military dimensions of the war against terror, while grossly neglecting the underlying multi-sectoral conditions that seem to spawn terrorists in the first place.

Because of its persistent inability or unwillingness to come to grips with the deeper causes of terror, Washington pursues security-based policies that will certainly thwart most terror operations, but at the same time may spark a new wave of terrorists. The best example is how attacks against American and other targets have increased as a direct result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Neither the commission report nor U.S. official policy – or the public at large, for that matter – have made any serious attempt since Sept. 11, 2001 to understand the complex process by which otherwise decent young men from various Arab and Asian countries transform themselves into terrorists and suicide bombers, almost indiscriminately attacking targets in the United States, Europe, Arab capitals and elsewhere.

By focusing primarily on what the United States can do to improve domestic security, develop better intelligence and pre-emptive capabilities, and protect itself against

future attacks, the commission report ends up addressing the symptoms rather than the causes of terror. It grapples impressively with the supply side of terror, without trying to understand the demand side that is the real underlying problem.

This is not a mystery – but it is politically awkward for the United States and many ruling regimes in the Arab-Asian region. The 9-11 brand of terror that first emerged a decade ago emanates from a relatively clear, linear historical process that transformed the Afghani jihadist guerrillas and Arab-Asian Islamist domestic activists of the 1980s into the terrorists of the 1990s and beyond.

The commission report only perfunctorily mentions the complex web of issues that drove this process. The most noteworthy include Arab domestic autocracy and corruption, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern lands, American-Israeli policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians, global double standards in implementing U.N. resolutions, an expedient and self-servingly hypocritical American policy of promoting democracy in some countries but not in Arab countries, economic stress and social disorientation at home, a cumulative sense of hopelessness and marginalization in one’s own country, and anger against the aggressive, militaristic American posture in the Middle East after the fall of the Soviet Union – to mention only the most obvious.

Those wayward young men who have chosen the criminal route of terror are not primarily a function of an extremist religious ideology or a charismatic single leader such as Osama bin Laden. It took decades for their societies to generate within them the distortions, fears, resentments and anger that made them prime candidates for the Bin Ladenist recruiting machine. They reflect, in fact, the cumulative consequence of often-brutal policies practiced over decades by a range of parties-primarily by Arab and Asian regimes, Israel, and the United States.

By choosing to ignore the many reasons for why and how bin Ladenist terrorists emerged on the world scene, and why 9-11 happened, both the commission report and wider American society run the risk of pursuing policies that only feed the terrorist recruiting machines and perpetuate the terror threat.

The worrying implication of the 9-11 commission report for the Middle East is that official Washington and Main Street USA both continue to focus primarily on how terror impacts America and how it can be prevented there, rather than exploring the deeper, more complex, local generators of terror in the Arab-Asian region, and also in the policy-making circles of Arab capitals, Israel and the United States.

Rami G. Khouri, a speaker at the 2005 Camden Conference, to be held Feb. 25-27 at the Camden Opera House, is the executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star. This commentary was originally published in bitterlemons-international.org