TERRORIST OVERREACH
By RALPH PETERS
NY POST
August 13, 2004 -- AL Qaeda and its affiliates are losing. They'll do their utmost to strike the United States before our elections. But even if they succeed, the effect will be the opposite of what they hope. And it won't change the fact that the terrorist beast is badly wounded.
The recent wave of arrests, from Pakistan through the Middle East to Britain, stunned the terrorists and sent them crawling for ever-deeper cover. The blow against terror has been so indisputable that even our embrace-the-terrorists-with-understanding crowd stopped crying that the War on Terror's a failure (note the shift in campaign rhetoric).
But it's also a fact that this struggle is far from over. It will take at least a full generation — perhaps much longer — to rid the world of the demons who have appointed themselves as Allah's executioners.
We do have some unexpected allies in this war, though: the terrorists themselves.
Counter to the made-on-campus nonsense that we can't succeed against terror, it's the terrorists who can't win. They can do horrific damage, creating scenes of slaughter among the innocent. But when it comes to employing such mega-violence, the terrorists are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
The terrorists need to stage spectacular events to convince the world of their power, to reassure their supporters of their continued viability and to draw fresh blood to the movement. Few flock to join a fugitive in a basement, but an Osama bin Laden allowed to appear triumphant — the Clinton administration's approach — is a magnet for every psychopath in the Muslim world.
Yet when the terrorists do conduct dramatic attacks, they earn brief fame, but unite ever more of the world against them. Had al Qaeda and its surrogates laid low after 9/11, instead of creating strategically random carnage, they'd be in vastly better shape today.
Consider a few of the consequences of recent terror attacks:
* The 9/11 events were supposed to bring America to its knees. Instead, America got up on its hind legs and struck back ferociously. The terror haven in Afghanistan was swept away. American troops took Baghdad, challenging the decayed civilization in which fundamentalist terror flourishes. And terrorists have been pursued, arrested or killed around the world.
* Madly, Islamic extremists staged a series of attacks in Saudi Arabia, biting the hand that fed them so generously. (Arguments that the terrorists are coolly logical collapse in the face of this operational folly.) After years of denials, the Saudi ruling family grasped the horror they had unleashed and began a severe crackdown.
* Terrorists twice tried to kill Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's head of state. The result? Musharraf, who had been trying to have it both ways, turned on the Islamists, sending troops into tribal areas bordering Afghanistan for the first time and telling his security services, in no uncertain terms, to break the terror networks in Pakistan. Since then, we've seen hundreds of arrests, including the recent bonanza busts.
* In Iraq, the terrorists found themselves unable to discourage or dislodge U.S. troops and core Coalition forces, so they began bombing Iraqis. But blowing local kids to bits does not win friends and influence people in your favor. The most striking recent development in Iraq — ignored by the global media — has been the rise of Iraqi resolve to eliminate foreign terrorists from their country.
* In Indonesia, terror attacks on nightclubs and hotels not only wounded the tourist industry, but alienated the majority of Indonesians, whose forms of Islam are humane and tolerant. Disgust with the terrorists was so deep that they've been forced to abandon their tactic of striking civilian targets.
Around the world, leaders have wondered if their country would be next. In a few cases, this led to appeasement. Yet far more often we've seen growing counter-terror cooperation — with far more arrests than you'll read about in the newspapers.
Terrorists always overreach. They create fantasy worlds in which they convince themselves that a grand and gruesome gesture will bring world-changing results. Yet, the more powerful the blow they deliver, the more likely they are to unify their enemies.
The recent arrests in Pakistan and Britain have been far more devastating to al Qaeda than media reports suggest. The headlines focus on the number of arrests, but an even greater loss to al Qaeda will be the loss of confidence in essential technologies.
Osama bin Laden lost a great propaganda tool when he stopped allowing video cameras near him. (He grew too afraid for his personal safety after 9/11.) But the terrorists' real "secret weapon" has been the Internet, the greatest means of disseminating hatred in history, more virulent by far than even the printing press.
For years, Islamic extremists used the 'Net with confidence and skill. It became their virtual empire and a citadel within which they could muster. Now — as a result of the seizure of over 50 computer discs in Pakistan and, by some reports, a thousand in Britain, along with loaded hard drives, Web address books and so much data we've barely begun to decipher it — al Qaeda must fear each next keystroke.
Even before the recent arrests, al Qaeda and its allies found themselves restricted in their abilities to travel, to raise funds and even to use cell phones (another great terrorist tool). By diffusing their efforts instead of concentrating on one objective, they created enemies for themselves among governments that had long looked the other way.
The terrorists have been their own worst enemies, always over-reaching in time to prevent the world from forgetting that the threat is real and immediate. Their madness will be their undoing.
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."
NEW YORK POST |
