Mission Accomplished!

Bin Laden is dead! Another chapter in the fight against terrorism seems closed. Should we celebrate it? This question needs to be asked, particularly because the United States, acting on intelligence, violated the sovereignty of a state (Pakistan) whose leaders, in retrospect, could only stand back and watch the events unfold.

With the disappearance of bin Laden, the Americans are analyzing their personal relationship with the former CIA agent who was a huge figure in the world of violence in the name of Islam. Americans are not total strangers with the rise of Islamism or with bin Laden as its leader. However, Washington has been allowed to play it both ways, in particular with its support for Afghan Islamist leaders who have caused great harm and damage in the Arab and Muslim countries, and particularly in Algeria. In killing bin Laden, the Americans have demonstrated the end of their mission with their former agent who became more problematic than useful.

But will the death of bin Laden put an end to the nuisance that is terrorism? Excuse us if we say that we doubt it. In reality, for what is now almost a decade after the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. has given itself the authority to intervene anywhere in the world under the security and defense of U.S. interests. The ins and outs of the 9/11 attacks remain to be determined. No specialist, including any from the U.S., believes in the possibility that poorly educated Islamists could be able to orchestrate an attack as sophisticated and well planned as those against the twin towers in New York. The world was taken in by the hysteria surrounding the events, and it was amid this that the United States was able to invade Iraq.

This game has been so subtle that it has not been easy to disassemble and analyze its structures and mechanisms. The benefits of it for the U.S. have been great, allowing it to become the reigning world power, deciding everything for everyone. Should we ask who benefits from this crime? After the fall of the communist bloc, and thus the disappearance of the “red scare,” we had to find another “scare” to allow the military industrial complex to continue operating. This “red scare,” which referred to communism, allowed the military and political powers to carry out the maneuvers that they deemed necessary during the Soviet era. This has been incorporated into a new “green scare,” which refers to Islam.

Between 1999 and 2000, the politics of fear reached its full power with the rise in Islamism, which was backed by the United States and coordinated covertly by the CIA until it came to its ultimate devastation. Overnight, al-Qaida became the new public enemy of the United States and, by extension, the rest of the world. But did al-Qaida act alone? This question is not as absurd as it may seem, and it refers directly to the manipulation by major Western powers, in particular the United States, of radical Islamist groups. We cannot understand the evolution of Islamism if we do not go back to its genesis when Washington thought that they could manipulate these extreme fanatical groups for its own interests, which had nothing to do with the peace and security of the world or with the liberalization of the Muslim world. In fact, bin Laden may be dead, but his ghost remains, inescapable.