Has the War on Terror Accomplished Its Goals?

What has become of the War on Terror? The United States of America is negotiating with the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, France is negotiating with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Israel is negotiating with Hamas, with the U.S. serving as an intermediary.

In the nine years since the crime of Sept. 11, 2001, the American intelligence agencies have not stopped searching for bin Laden in the caves and tunnels of Tora Bora, even though it is like “looking for a needle in a haystack” as the saying goes.

The results of the War on Terror rest upon the practical results it has achieved. In Afghanistan, where the planning for the attacks on New York and Washington took place and from whence the operation was launched, the United States today acknowledges that “there is no victory in the war on Afghanistan.” This means that the military operations the U.S. wages with the help of NATO forces will not have the final word in determining the security situation, and that the U.S. does not really believe it can do away with the Taliban movement by force. From this point comes the idea of taking another look at the war on the basis of possible negotiations with the Taliban, rather than trying to uproot them as George W. Bush, the previous U.S. president, always insisted was his goal.

But the Taliban movement refuses this American demarche and insists on a complete military withdrawal, with negotiations to begin once it is complete. Any negotiations in the shadow of an occupation are refused before they can even get off the ground. This attitude reflects the feelings of the Taliban with regard to the intimidation and hubris of the U.S. and the feelings of the U.S. regarding the need to acknowledge the situation on the ground and of dealing with it without obstinacy.

Nevertheless, Washington, which does not want to face in Kabul what it faced in Saigon (the capital of South Vietnam, from which it conducted a humiliating withdrawal at the hands of the forces of the Vietcong), is trying to play another card entirely. In accordance with this new gambit, it is trying to push Afghanistan into a tribal war whose main antagonist would be the Pashtuns. This is to divide the country and partition it, thus weakening it from within.

Should Afghanistan descend into a tribal war of this kind, it may not rise again for another one hundred years. This is because the strongly rooted tradition of vengeance in tribal life makes igniting disorder and division a simple task, while making any escape from such disorder an elusive, difficult goal.

However, the failure of the British experience in trying to ignite division among the tribes of Afghanistan during the period of its occupation of the Indian sub-continent until 1947 should not encourage the U.S. as it undertakes this new venture. Britain succeeded in inciting a division between Muslims and Hindus that led to the great partition and to the birth of the countries of India and Pakistan. But Britain failed to incite division among Muslims. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan preserved their unity, despite the temptations and machinations directed toward them. As for the breaking off of Bangladesh from Pakistan, this comes back to geo-political reasons, as India lies between these two regions.

This does not mean that Afghanistan — or even Pakistan — is immune from division, as the impetus for factionalism comes from socio-economic backwardness (not sectarian or denominational divisions). This has the potential to be exploited politically, in such a way that the Afghan-American conflict could become an Afghan-Afghan one. The same thing happened in occupied Palestine (between the Fatah and Hamas movements), where a Palestinian-Israeli conflict was changed into a Palestinian-Palestinian conflict, although this happened in small measure only.

The picture in Iraq is somewhat clearer, as the official reports of American intelligence agencies that have been declassified recently establish that, since the first day President George W. Bush set foot in the White House, he had decided to invade Iraq. Bush asked U.S. intelligence agencies to produce a justification for a war he had already decided to launch. Maybe his decision goes back to the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein being accused of plotting the assassination of the first President Bush (George W. Bush’s father) because of his role in directing the American military response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

The former American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld now acknowledges that U.S. intelligence agencies worked to fabricate the accusation against Saddam Hussein that he possessed weapons of mass destruction and that he had a cooperative relationship with the al-Qaida organization and with bin Laden personally. The case for war stipulated that U.S. intelligence feared that weapons of mass destruction could be given by Iraq to al-Qaida, which would represent a danger to the United States and its allies.

On the basis of this contrived understanding of affairs, the American war against Iraq was launched, resting on the basis that it was part and parcel of completing the war against terrorism that had been launched by President Bush with the invasion of Afghanistan.

But the realities on the ground have established that Iraq was not in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein’s relations with the al-Qaida organization were very negative; there was no cooperation between them and hardly any ongoing contact. Tariq Aziz, foreign minister for Saddam Hussein, himself affirmed this when he was questioned during his imprisonment in Baghdad.

Still, the American war on Iraq that rests on the pretense of fighting terrorism has become a humanitarian calamity that has taken the lives of almost one million Iraqis and more than 4,400 American soldiers. The worst thing that has resulted from the war is the breaking apart of Iraqi society on sectarian (Christian-Muslim), denominational (Sunni-Shiite) and ethnic (Arab-Kurd, Turcoman-Kurd) grounds.

Moreover, the American invasion of Iraq has led to the spread of al-Qaida to Mesopotamia under the pretense of resisting the occupation, their stated justification for coming to Iraq. This organization has exercised crimes of collective killing by way of car bombings that have taken the lives of thousands of innocent victims. With that, the war has led to the widening of the base of terrorism until it has spread even to Africa: from Somalia in the east to Nigeria in the west, by way of Mali and Mauritania.

These regions have witnessed campaigns of advance and retreat between armed al-Qaida forces and French military supported by the militaries of Mali and Mauritania. But one operation ended in the tragic death of a kidnapped civilian and a number of security personnel. Fearing that similar results would reoccur, the French government has been forced to open dialogue with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, hoping to free its kidnapped civilians peacefully. But what will follow in the wake of negotiations that carry dangerous political implications?

When the War on Terror was announced, it raised the goal under the slogan of eradication. This means that there was to be no room for dialogue and no negotiating with terrorists. What is happening now, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Mauritania, indicates the opposite altogether.

Hardly a month or two passes without a new terrorist cell rising and taking the name of al-Qaida. This happens from Andalusia to Australia, from Cambodia to Singapore and includes Canada and the United States. Is it possible, in light of these negative results, to suppose that the war on terror has accomplished its goals, or even a part of its goals?

There is no doubt that the tying of terrorism to Islam is the fatal mistake the U.S. effort has succumbed to since former President George W. Bush declared the War on Terror. It has harmed Islam and encouraged terrorism. This is what the world is suffering from today, and it is the reason the U.S. has failed on two accounts.

As far as fighting terrorism, the U.S. effort has caused it to increase and spread. As for the way the U.S. has dealt with Islam, the U.S. has given up on trying to engage the Islamic world, rather than engage it as an asset in the War on Terror.

Since President Barack Obama’s arrival in the White House, he has tried to come up with an honorable exit for his country from the two failed wars, but his intentions have been better than his abilities and his statements more impressive than his decisions.