Fighting Al-Qaeda Minus the Illusions

It’s their non-territorial nature that enables network organizations like al-Qaeda to operate and survive. If we were dealing with states in the classical sense, they would have boundaries and a population and we would be able to choose from a whole palette of options, from economic sanctions to military intervention, to put pressure on them.

Because of their non-territorial nature, such organizations have set themselves apart from the community of nations. Network organizations are hard to get a grip on, and the larger the hands reaching for them the less tangible they become.

But even non-territorial entities can’t survive without a physical home base. That’s where they have their headquarters and their training facilities. Prior to 2001, al-Qaeda’s base was eastern Afghanistan, but that has apparently changed to the northern region of Yemen.

Signs that al-Qaeda headquarters were relocating to Yemen became visible even before the failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit. The proximity to Saudi-Arabia as well as to Somalia on the other side of the Gulf of Aden was of great geostrategic interest to al-Qaeda in its fight against the United States and its western allies.

Al-Qaeda considered the gradual collapse of the Yemeni nation useful. All signs now point to the fact that the southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula will occupy the West’s close attention for some years to come.

Have we learned anything at all useful from the minimal successes in the attempt to stabilize Afghanistan that will help us be more successful in Yemen? One difference in the run up to events is significant: While the Taliban in Kabul failed to cooperate in the fall of 2001, refusing to hand over Osama bin-Laden, the government in Yemen made it clear that it wanted to cooperate with the West in its war on terrorism.

Yemen, however, has also made it clear it wants no foreign troops on its soil; it wants to join the war on terror on its own terms. To that end, Yemen has asked for money and arms. Presumably, it won’t limit the use of both to just fighting al-Qaeda.

So the West finds itself in another dilemma. In Afghanistan it set loftier goals: Democratization of the entire nation including educational equality for females. But that proved to be over-reaching. The recent shift to the “Afghanization” of security and reconstruction is a clandestine retreat from those goals. Such goals should be avoided in Yemen’s case and the West should content itself with fighting terrorists and preventing a total governmental collapse.

The West has become disillusioned after a whole decade of striving for a new world order based on lofty idealism. The planning went far beyond anyone’s capability to deliver. We’re now gradually returning to supportive policies that were the norm during the Cold War. We support governments because we have common enemies, not because we share the same standards and values.

That may be the first lesson we’ve learned from the bitter experience in Afghanistan.