ENEMY OF THE 21ST CENTURY HAS ITS ROOTS IN THE 12TH
Georgie Anne Geyer
WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush said this week that, after Sept. 11, America faces a "different kind of enemy" -- and from the American viewpoint, this is surely right. But then he said that this was an "enemy of the 21st century," and this is where we have to be careful.
For in some ways, the al'Qaeda movement of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan can be traced more directly to the 12th century. It was then that another Islamic leader, Hassan Sabah, similarly intoxicated by radical religiosity and by the need to "purify" the world, built his castle of Alamut in northwestern Iran. From there he sent out "assassins" (the very word comes from the Arabic and from his missions) to the entire region. By the time he was finished, he had overthrown every court and regime in the entire Middle East.
So, first of all, Osama bin Laden is firmly rooted in Near Eastern history. This modern-day Hassan Sabah sits in Afghanistan, most of the time in the city of Kandahar, throwing thunderbolts in the form of his own radicalized young men at similarly "evil" worlds he wants to destroy. We miss the comparison at our own risk, because in order to combat the man and his rapidly growing movement, we have to understand the roots of his perverse passions. Then and only then can we use his passions against him -- and destroy the movement he has unleashed upon the world.
Here, then, are some of the things we need to know --and to do -- to combat bin Laden:
First, we must realize that he is no longer "out there" with only a small group of followers. Getting rid of him physically and even of the group's leadership would not rid us of the threat. Since the incomplete end of the Afghan war in 1989, when the Afghan fighters against the Soviets were suddenly abandoned by the countries of the West that had courted and used them for its own purposes, hundreds upon hundreds of "madrassah" schools have formed in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and by now they have trained thousands of otherwise rootless boys in radical Islam and in its most violent tactics. They are here now, regardless, and they need to be geopolitically deprogrammed.
Second, he has his "soldiers" all over the capitals of Europe, from which they have launched, or tried to launch, countless attacks against Western targets, including a little-known plan only last winter, aborted by British, German and Spanish police, to bomb the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
The administration might pause to study with great care articles appearing in London this week about the foreign Islamicists living in England and plotting for bin Laden from there. "Extremists Who Make Their Home in Britain" is the title of the Evening Standard's Wednesday article, quoting leaders of radical Muslim groups headquartered there, such as the "Supporters of Shariah" and the "Advice and Reformation Committee" as "jumping up and down" in glee when the World Trade Center went down.
Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, arguably the best-informed journalist in the world on Afghan's guerrilla politics, wrote in the Daily Telegraph this week that "Bin Laden now has some 3,000 Arab radicals from 13 different countries in Afghanistan. ... Many of these educated Arab militants are based in Europe and come to Afghanistan where they receive sophisticated training by Egyptian and Algerian radicals working for bin Laden in bomb making, communications and planning strikes."
Surely one of the first things to be done is to stop pretending that any action against such political groups is somehow "anti-Muslim" prejudice -- but instead to get them out of Europe and prevent them from employing even further the advanced technology and communications there that they have mastered so well.
We must realize that -- in contrast to 1993, when bin Laden first attempted to blow up the World Trade Center -- he now has not only a vast, organized and inspired movement, but a worldwide network that will preclude any quick fixes on the part of the West. He is already undermining the fragile Pakistan military regime and is eating away at the countries of Central Asia while also sending militants as far away as the Philippines. And he has hooked up only recently, but apparently very effectively, with the Egyptian movement al Jihad, which was one of the groups involved in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, as well as with the Algerian fundamentalists, who are some of the most brutal militants in the world.
It is necessary to remember that the bin Laden movement is not so much proof of Harvard professor Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" (i.e., Judeo-Christianity vs. Islam) as it is a clash of social classes within the Arab world and a clash of children vs. adults. Over and over this week, Arab diplomats have said to us Americans, "It's a strike against our way of life, too." In other words, they are also part of the modern world, while the radical fundamentalists essentially want to destroy modernity and its exemplar, the "Great Satan."
It is equally a struggle with groups such as the primitive ruling Islamic Taliban in Afghanistan, which totally rejects the traditional Islam represented by authorities such as those at Al Azhar University in Cairo, and seeks to create its own separate Islam, childlike in its theological primitiveness and regressiveness -- and just as cruel.
Finally, there is the curious place of technology in the entire equation. For although the theology of these radicals is retrogressive and they hate the culture of the West, they are adept at embracing and using its technology. Indeed, it has been true for many years that an unusual number of the fundamentalists are scientifically trained. They feel and see no conflict in embracing the West's technology while hanging on to ancient religious animus.
At the same time, in this strange exchange of threats and hatreds between them and the West, it is they who have shown the West how fragile its technology alone can be. Until Tuesday, technology has been the American salvation; oddly enough, after Tuesday, with some of the greatest symbols of our technology lying in rubble, it was the American spirit and American principles that soared in the nation.
So what we are seeing is ancient tactics of destruction, reminiscent of the same type that Hassan Sabah pioneered nine centuries ago, melded in the minds of these obsessed men with the modern technology that symbolizes the greatest Western power in the world. If we are to win in this new world war that has been thrust upon us -- and we can, and we must, and we will -- we have to form a policy that deals with all of these complex factors and overcomes them.
COPYRIGHT 2001 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
Originally Published on September-14-2001
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