Obama Al Qaeda Strategy

Can Obama Strategy Destroy Al-Qaeda?

By Kazi Anwarul Masud

President Obama’s strategy to fight the Taliban is yet to get unanimous support in all the quarters in the US. US Senate Foreign relations Committee Chairman John Kerry expressed in May that Pakistan with its nuclear arsenal, terrorist safe havens, Taliban sanctuaries and growing insurgency has become the most difficult challenge faced by the US. He added that Pakistan at present has the potential to be crippled by the Taliban or to act as bulwark against everything the Taliban represent. Senator Kerry underscored the Pakistani feeling of being used by the US and then left in the lurch and also the American policy of cooperation with the military while paying scant attention to the wishes of the people.

In May also President Obama’s Af-Pak representative Richard Hallbrooke testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that a stable, secure, democratic Pakistan was vital to the US national interest. He said that President Obama’s policy towards Pakistan was to ensure Pakistan’s stability necessary for the security of the US and the rest of the world through increased security, governance and development assistance to Pakistan. Halbrooke spoke of the trilateral engagement among the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan in which the three parties shared commitment to combat terrorism and extremism.

South Asian expert Rory Stewart told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the final goal of the Obama administration to disrupt, dismantle and defeat the al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and to prevent their return to either country in future, " is trying to do the impossible. It is highly unlikely that the US will be able either to build an effective, legitimate state or to defeat the Taliban insurgency".

In the same vein Pulitzer Prize winner journalist Steve Coll( New Yorker October 19, 2009)writes that since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 attempts by foreign powers to shape events there have repeatedly been thwarted by what intelligence analysts call "mirror imaging" which is the tendency of the decision makers in one country to judge counterparts in another country through the prism of their own language and politics . Coll cautioned that safeguarding American interests in AfPak region to free it from the Taliban should not be confused with the quest for an honest President in Kabul where rulers often have not been trustworthy

This converges to some extent with Samuel Huntington’s proposition made in his book POLITICAL ORDER IN CHANGING SOCIETIES(1968) that authority, even of a brutal kind, is preferable to none at all and that the degree to which a state is governed is more important than how it is governed. Huntington felt that despite ideological differences the US had more in common with the USSR than it did with any weakly ruled states. Unsurprisingly neo-con Michael Ledeen (rediscovering American character-September 11, 2009) quoting Alexis de Tocqeville’s description of the Americans as "a restless, reasoning and adventurous race" has called for dismissal of claims that "all people are the same, all cultures are of equal worth, all values are relative, and all judgments are to be avoided". He calls the al-Qaeda terrorism as the "latest incarnation of servitude – this time wrapped in a religious mantle" that must be defeated.

While one cannot contest that terrorism in all forms must be defeated his praise of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who openly said that it was Islam and not al-Qaeda that posed danger to the world is worrying. The skepticism relating to practice of democracy in many developing countries is in agreement with those of Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, Bernard Lewis, Joseph Stiglitz and others that as the practice of democracy requires a degree of prosperity of a nation the Western countries should not expect a faultless administration in countries where they are engaged in fighting the Taliban menace.

Robert Blackwill of Rand Corporation ( The geopolitical consequences of the world economic recession) thinks that over time G-20 will become more influential than G-8. In the next decade or so G -20 will exert more influence on IMF but is unlikely to shape the UN Security Council. Blackwill’s prediction is based on reading the transcending events in history like the French Revolution bringing in Napoleon, Bolshevik Revolution producing the Soviet empire, the Great Depression reinforcing the demise of the Weimar Republic, the advent of Adolph Hitler and such other historical events.

The point is that though unipolar moment may have pased but the US, as Leslie Gelb writes in his book POWER RULES, " the global power is decidedly pyramidical- with the US alone at the top, a second tier of major countries( China, India, the UK, France , Germany and Brazil and several tiers) descending below" will be the key determinants of security in the 21st century. But if power is the capacity to make people do what they do not want to do, then the US after the Bush administration may not want to force the doctrine of preemption as the way to solve global issues and instead as Nobel Committee has said in its citation while awarding Barak Obama the Peace Prize the US may opt for a global reconciliation among different groups pledging allegiance to different faiths and opposing further dissipation of national sovereignty.

Equally China has not in recent past, except in the case of Tibet, displayed any intention of using coercive diplomacy in settling bilateral issues and has played a responsible role in the UNSC. The problem with other G-20 countries is poverty and/or lack of good governance that are likely to divert their attention from international issues to more pressing ones at home. US therefore with its global reach and its surplus wealth (discounting the current recession that may be on the mend) will remain the determining power in the world for the foreseeable future.

One may be treading the fault lines in global politics if one were to assume that peace and tranquility would rule the world. China’s resurgence in Asia would worry Japan and to an extent India given Chinese objection to Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh for election campaign, China’s ire at the refuge given by India to Dalai Lama since he fled Chinese occupation of Tibet, and India’s objection to the building of a dam in Tibet by China that may affect water flow in the rivers flowing into India and Bangladesh.

Europe in this matrix, free of neo-cons like Robert Kagan who suggested the Americans making the dinner and the Europeans doing the dishes and his "co-religionists" like Paul Wolfowitz. Richard Perle and others, may opt for a more internationally acceptable legal framework for a new global construct. The opposing views are not exceptional in most countries. In Australia, for example, the differences between the Conservatives and Labor was based on "realism" and "idealism".

In this evolution of a new global architecture it has become difficult to discern the religious factor in the al-Qaeda and Taliban sponsored terrorism. Pakistan is now virtually fighting for its life though in the eyes of Bruce Riedel and some others Pakistan is now the epicenter of terrorism. Hillary Clinton during her visit to Pakistan in October virtually accused the country of complicity with al-Qaeda. She found it difficult to believe that no one among Pakistani authorities knew whereabouts of the al-Qaeda leadership though al-Qaeda has had safe-havens in Pakistan since 2002. She also implicitly crotocised Pakistani military security establishment. It is believed that Pak-Afghan border region had been the base of 9/11 hijackers and many other terrorists and that most terrorist attacks from World Trade Center in 1993 have been traced to Pakistan and not to Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq.

The terrorism at Bali testifies that the largest Muslim country in the world was not spared. The argument proferred that terrorism in Muslim countries is to establish the pristine spirit and practice of Islam does not hold water as the victims of terrorism are often innocent and pious men, women and children who by no stretch of imagination can be termed as "degenerates" and many are not even Westernized. What then do the Taliban expect to achieve? Already they reportedly have become unpopular in Swat and Malakand in Pakistan where they ruled for sometime because of their harsh and brutal treatment of the people, especially of the women.

The world should not stand by and see Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan and risk the falling of nuclear materials into the hands of the fanatics.

Some of the US leaders have questioned the logic of greater support to Pakistan than to Afghanistan at a time when al-Qaeda is gaining ground in Afghanistan and the billions of dollars of assistance given to Pakistan is being misused either through diversion to bolster Pak military along Indian border or through outright corruption. Unknown to the US taxpayers successive US administrations have tolerated misuse of military and financial aid to Pakistan during the period of ousting the Soviets from Afghanistan and to other military dictators during the cold war. One should not forget that the Taliban were created by Pak President Ziaul Huq with American money and materials. The task was easy because the Taliban given their tribal background and being brought up in Islamist tradition took up arms against the communist Soviets who did not believe in God. As the terrorist attacks of 9/11 demonstrated the West had in effect created a Frankenstein capable of destabilizing a world order that was emerging after the end of bipolarity of the cold war period.

The Western concern about extremist Islamic terrorism has effectively put on the global stage Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations theory, dismissed by many Western scholars and political leaders, due to lack of solution of the Middle East crisis and general underdevelopment in Muslim countries the world may be divided along religious lines. Despite Bruce Riedels prescription for a democratic dispensation in Pakistan doubts has always remained whether Pakistani society being largely ruled by oligarchs where the individual still has to free himself from tradition, where primordial tribal loyalty predominates decision making process, where religious edicts by village Maulanas have quasi-judicial force, and gender inequality is accepted as normative social order, institution of Western liberal democracy would not remain a far cry. Benazir Bhutto was, perhaps, the most secular and determined among Pakistani leaders to face up to the increasing Islamic extremism in the country and was decidedly most favored by the Western powers among the political leaders in Pakistan. Her death, says Stephen Cohen, dealt a death blow to the idea of a liberal and moderate Pakistan. In Pakistan separatism did increase as did violent extremist Islamism.

Given the odds stacked against them it is not clearly understandable what is the end game of the Taliban. Eminent Muslim scholars by and large have condemned the Taliban claim to purge Islam of so-called western degenerative elements and to establish Caliphate of the 6th century Saudi Arabia. Indeed the Taliban consider the Muslim countries of abandoning the true faith as they understand Islam and have threatened to unseat the present regimes in Muslim countries.

It is undeniable that most of the members of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) would not fulfill the criteria of democracy practiced by the West. Yet to expect that these countries, all being developing or least developed countries would be adorned with the socio-political sophistication of the developed countries acquired over centuries is not practical. In making this statement the debate of what is democracy or its different forms has been deliberately avoided. In tribal societies it is difficult for the people in power not to help ones kith and kin, a sin and nepotism surely to be accused of in Western societies. Equally the preponderance of the values of common welfare over individual welfare in the Eastern societies cannot be wished away.

Luckily for the world George W Bush’s wrecking ball diplomacy and his determination to spread democracy everywhere is now a matter of the past. But the responsibility of the global players to keep the world safe for the present and future generations has to remain a constant in the agenda of the leaders of the world