Winning the war against al-Qa'ida

Exerpts from The Australian Editorial, September 13, 2006 ...

Osama bin Laden's stocks with Muslims are diminishing

ACCORDING to the conventional wisdom of breast-beating critics of US President George W. Bush, the war on terror has only hurt the West and aided al-Qa'ida..... Five years on from the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Wahhabist terror organisation has failed to win the hearts and minds of the world's Muslims. Al-Qa'ida's remaining leaders hide in remote caves.

The organisation's state-of-the-art terrorist training infrastructure in Afghanistan has been dismantled. Its around 4000-strong membership has been decimated, with at least 3000 al-Qa'ida cadres from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed down killed or captured in 102 countries worldwide.

The Bush administration's rigorous homeland security strategy to protect Americans at home has prevented a fresh assault on the continental US. And according to some experts, the remaining leadership of the organisation is racked with division over whether bin Laden overplayed his hand in murdering nearly 3000 civilians. .... Instead of producing a groundswell of support from within the Islamic world, continuing wanton violence orchestrated by al-Qa'ida has resulted in the opposite: growing discomfort about the association between Islam and violence and an increasing split between the Sunnis and the Shia – and not just in Iraq.

.... a report issued by the London-based foreign affairs think tank Chatham House earlier this month makes clear, the terror group's recent strikes at the soft heart of Islam in Saudi Arabia and Jordan have just intensified the unease of mainstream Muslims. Rather than winning recruits, notes the report's author, Maha Azzam, al-Qai'da is facing a "very serious challenge to its legitimacy" as a result of Muslim distaste at atrocities such as the bombing of weddings at Amman hotels last year, killing at least 60. As well as losing popular support, these attacks are only bracing thoughtful Sunni leadership across the region against terrorist forces.

.... Hussein's regime, even if lacking weapons of mass destruction, posed a risk the world could not afford to take. Would Iraq under Saddam have used nuclear weapons if it had them? ....as an incubator for al-Qa'ida and a refuge for its terrorists on the run, Iraq posed a serious world threat..... Taken together with what we now know about Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan's role in spreading atomic weapons technology to rogue states, a plot by Iraq-based terrorists to detonate the dirty "Islamic bomb" bin Laden has called for in a Western city could not be discounted.

Perversely, the conflict within Iraq has concentrated al-Qa'ida's efforts within its borders, allowing the disabling of its operations elsewhere. In Indonesia, for example, the terror crackdown by the Government of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has broken up Jemaah Islamiah, the terror group behind the Bali bombings and the attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta. Many of those responsible are behind bars awaiting firing squads. JI bomb-maker Azahari Husin was killed in a raid last year, while Hambali, the mastermind behind the Bali bombings, is incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay after being captured by the CIA in Thailand in 2003.

In putting Hambali out of action, the CIA at the same time cut the link between JI and al-Qa'ida. Similar crackdowns have taken place in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The wildcard in the terrorists' pack is the rise of homegrown radicalism in the West ... the misguided middle class, Western-born son or daughter of migrant parents, or perhaps a convert.

Terrorism as we know it today began not with the September 11, 2001, attacks and the White House's response, but with the 1979 coup against Iran's shah. This crisis launched radical Islam's rise in the region and underpinned more than a generation of Middle East instability. The first World Trade Centre attack in 1993, the bombing of the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, all preceded the war on terror.

Five years on from 9/11, the view from the cave of an ageing and possibly sick bin Laden is not of victory but of his plans for a caliphate stretching across the Islamic world disintegrating.