The US aid program for Al Qaeda
Following up on what I wrote yesterday about our missile attacks in Southern Yemen strengthening Al Qaeda, there is an unusually informative article in Time — written by Abigail Hauslohner and based on her interview with Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen of Princeton University — that provides substantial elaboration on this point. Noting that the U.S.-aided attack "appears to have resulted in a number of civilian casualties," the Time article details Johnsen’s view that "last week’s attacks would ultimately prove counterproductive":
[R]egardless of who did what, a primary target in the attacks — Qasim al-Raymi, the al-Qaeda leader who is believed to be behind a 2007 bombing in central Yemen that killed seven Spanish tourists and two Yemenis — is still at large. And reports of a U.S. role, and mass civilian casualties at the sites of the attacks, have sparked a public outcry and added to anti-American sentiments across the country. "They missed that individual," says Johnsen of the targeted al-Qaeda chief. "And at the same time, they ended up killing a number of women and children in the strike on Abyan. So now you have something where there are all these pictures of dead infants and mangled children that are underlined with the caption ‘Made in the USA’ on all the jihadi forums. Something like this does much more to extend al-Qaeda."
Indeed through the backlash that followed, the attacks have started to look like more of a boon than a bust for Yemen’s al-Qaeda revival, as well as for other opponents of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime. Iran — which Yemen accuses of backing the Shi’ite Houthi rebellion in the north — headlined the attacks on its state-sponsored Press TV with: "Obama ordered deadly blitz on Yemen."
"The al-Qaeda threat in Yemen is real, but now after this operation, it will be greater," says Mohammed Quhtan, a member of Yemen’s opposition Islamist al-Islah party. "Al-Qaeda will be able to recruit a lot more young people, at least from the tribes that were hit. And it will have reasonable grounds to attract more people from Abyan governorate, and from the Yemeni population in general. . . . "If you’re going to carry out [an attack] like this, you have to have done a great deal of field work, where you’ve sort of undermined al-Qaeda through development and aid so that when something like this happens, al-Qaeda can’t easily replace the individuals that it has lost," says Johnsen. "But if you don’t take those steps then the pool of recruits just starts to multiply exponentially."
So with this missile strike, we find yet again the most pervasive and destructive myth of American "counter-terrorism" efforts: that there’s this finite worldwide club called "The Terrorists" (also known as "al Qaeda"), and our solemn mission is to hunt down its members and kill them all, and once we do, there will be no more "Terrorists" and we will have won. Even at the peak of America’s warmongering hysteria in mid-2003, even Donald Rumsfeld knew enough to worry that more terrorists were being recruited and created than we were killing. The Pentagon’s 2004 independent Task Force emphatically concluded that our acts of violence in the Muslim world were fueling — not undermining — Islamic radicalism. Mountains of other evidence demonstrate the same conclusion.
What’s particularly confounding about our continuing on this path is that Obama is well aware of this causal relationship. He’s repeatedly acknowledged it, and taken numerous steps — from outreach efforts to the Muslim world to changing the tone of our foreign policy to trying to close Guantanamo — that are all grounded in his accurate belief that decreasing anti-American sentiment is a prerequisite for improving American national security and combating Islamic extremism. Yet as …
Could it be that the civilian casualties are really caused by the coward Al-Qida and other terrorists have no concern for their own people and hide behind children and womens skirts. They are the ones who should be getting the blame is these situations. Nobody seems to think that they are the culprits. But I do, and I can tell disgusting cowards using their own people as shields.
Steven
Steven
23 December 2009 at 10:41 am
Sure it’s disgusting that they use innocent civilians as shields, but it’s also disgusting that the US bombs those innocent civilians to smithereens, thus pumping up the rage against the US by many more extended families, prompting many more children and young men to decide to dedicate their lives to avenging their families and friends.
Fighting terrorists is not like fighting a normal war: you can’t just blunder around killing innocents and get ahead of the game.
And suppose a terrorist leader was discovered to be eating in a restaurant in the US. How would you feel about bombing the restaurant, killing everyone in it to kill the terrorist? Would you be okay with that? If not, why are you okay with the same situation in Pakistan or Afghanistan?
The point of the column is not about how disgusting, immoral, depraved, and indifferent to life the terrorists are. We accept that. The point is what the US does seems similar in its indifference to civilian deaths—and is seen that way by the people of those countries, particularly (of course) those whose relatives were shredded by US bombs or missiles—and using those is a US decision, not a terrorist decision.
LeisureGuy
23 December 2009 at 11:06 am
You do understand, don’t you, that US tactics are increasing the strength of the terrorist movement? And in that situation, don’t you think using other tactics is a good idea?
LeisureGuy
23 December 2009 at 11:07 am
What do you suggest? Perhaps we should sit down and make nice-nice with these fanatical cut-throats. That seem to be the way the congress wants to do it.
Steven
23 December 2009 at 12:05 pm
Well, a multipronged approach is needed, and it should not involve our killing civilians. Certainly negotiations would be good—especially if the civilian population in which the terrorists move see us as willing to negotiate. We should also improve civilian aid—e.g., by well-guarded hospitals (since terrorists will try to destroy them) to treat civilians. If terrorists punish those who benefit from the hospital, they’ll start cutting the ground from beneath their own feet. We should also do other forms of direct aid to the civilian population (to cut losses due to corruption).
I think, at basis, it’s impossible to stop terrorism through military means. What does seem to work is cutting the civilian support for terrorists, which effort can proceed on a variety of fronts.
Take a look at this talk and also at this post on terrorists who turned against terrorism—we want more of those, so we should try to understand the motivations in both directions (i.e., the motivation to become a terrorist and the motivation to turn against terrorism).
It would also help if the world could see that the US respects human rights and the rule of law and held fair and open trials of terrorists with the opportunity to display the evidence against them. We’ve done that in hundreds of cases with good results, yet some still lack faith in the US Constitution and system of justice and continually want us to imitate the terrorists.
LeisureGuy
23 December 2009 at 12:24 pm
BTW, those ideas are just off the top of my head. There are experts who know much more than I. We should seek them out and support them and listen to them. In the meantime, some of these books seem as though they would be informative.
I’d be interested in ideas that you have on how to combat terrorism effectively. And notice that we do have to contend with domestic non-Muslim terrorists—Timothy McVeigh is a notable example, as is the guy who gunned down the doctor in Kansas and the pipe-bomber of abortion clinics who was finally taken into custody.
LeisureGuy
23 December 2009 at 12:28 pm