28Dec03-Trevor Royle-Saddam’s captured, Gaddafi’s given up … so why are we still on orange alert?
The war on terror changed last week, and things finally looked set to improve. But then alerts were issued, flights cancelled and it was back to business as usual. What now? Diplomatic Editor Trevor Royle explains
IN Washington they breathed a sigh of relief that Christmas Day had not been sullied by terrorism. The threat level remains at code orange, one stage short of an actual attack, but there were no chemical or biological attacks in the 30 cities being monitored and the threat of another US attack with civil airliners failed to materialise. The only fallout came from a diplomatic row between the US and France after Washington demanded the cancellation of six Air France flights after the CIA warned that al-Qaeda was planning to use airliners to repeat the September 11 attacks.
In Islamabad there was equal satisfaction mixed with relief when President Pervez Musharraf escaped a Christmas Day assassination attempt. It was the second in a fortnight and it took the lives of the two would-be assassins as well as 15 civilians who were killed when the car bombs exploded as Musharraf’s motorcade made its way from Islamabad to his home in Rawalpindi. According to Major-General Shaukat Sultan of the Pakistani security services it was still unclear if the attackers were members of a Pakistani militant group or linked to outside networks such as al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
In Tel Aviv the holiday season was marred by a suicide bomber who killed four Israelis, while an Israeli army missile attack on Gaza left five Palestinians dead. At the same time, downtown Baghdad was left shaken as US forces and Iraqi terrorists exchanged gunfire with an AC-130 Spectre firing off its Gatling cannons at the rate of 3000 rounds a minute.
On Christmas Eve, four US soldiers died in separate attacks, one trying to defuse a bomb in Baghdad, the others when their convoy was bombed outside Samarra, north of the capital.
These were the latest rounds in the war against terrorism, a campaign that stretches from the US to the Middle East and which offers no hiding places for those fighting it. In the run-up to Christmas the mood in Washington had been bleak as security officials warned an attack was in the offing and one of 30 cities was in danger. They had every reason to believe an attack was a possibility – the emergency services would be overstretched and the symbolism of an attack during a Christian festival was all too obvious.
A successful strike would also restore the credit balance to al-Qaeda and its cohorts – in the past week or so they have seen the initiative pass to the US and its allies. First Saddam Hussein was captured and the world was left to see the once- powerful Iraqi leader reduced to a gaunt and frightened scarecrow. Then, soon afterwards, Libya renounced its weapons of mass destruction and opened the way for other rogue states to take the same route towards salvation by embracing the American way of pacifying the world. If the US mainland had been attacked or if Musharraf had been killed in Pakistan it would have sent a powerful message that the terrorists were still in business at a time when figureheads such as Saddam had been captured and Libya’s leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, had sold out (for so it seemed) to the West.
The alert came from increased “chatter” picked up over lines of communication suggesting that groups within the al-Qaeda network had been badly rattled by Saddam’s arrest and Gaddafi’s about-turn. More than any other factor the Libyan decision was perplexing, not least because it had been engineered by Moussa Koussa, the head of Libya’s foreign intelligence organisation and one of Gaddafi’s most trusted advisors. With his connections in the Middle East and his knowledge of international terrorism Koussa has many enemies, especially in Britain. In 1980 he was expelled from London after threatening to kill anyone involved with granting asylum to Gaddafi’s political opponents and he made no secret of his admiration of the IRA. Koussa was also suspected of involvement in the Lockerbie bombing and as recently as 1995 British intelligence claimed his agents had links into all the world’s major terrorist organisations.
Yet two weeks ago this shadowy and much- disliked figure was in London to fine-tune an agreement which had been months in the making – Libya’s agreement to destroy its weapons of mass destruction – and which led to last week’s heightened terrorist concerns. It was a meeting which demanded discretion and privacy and there are few better places to find both qualities than the Travellers’ Club in St James’s in London. While Christmas crowds were thronging the nearby arcades and stores in London’s west end, a group of British and Libyan diplomats and intelligence officers sat down in the club to make the final arrangements for the surprise announcement which allowed Libya to exchange its weapons of mass destruction in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.
It was a very British kind of triumph – understated, tactful and, above all, complete. What had begun earlier in the year as a series of cautious meetings in Libya ended in wintry London with an agreed statement which brought to an end two decades of confrontation between the Libyan leader and successive governments in London and Washington. The CIA was also involved in the deal but in the US capital last week senior officials at the State Department were quick to heap praise on their British counterparts. They knew Libya’s agreement meant it was the beginning of the end of one phase in the war against terrorism – the battle to persuade rogue states to dismantle their secret programmes to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
One senior US diplomatic source is convinced the Libyan deal is the harbinger of a good year ahead: “Gaddafi was ready to come in from the cold, that’s why he was prepared to strike a lasting deal. I guess he realised America was prepared to act against any such threat before it was fully formed. And no doubt he took a long hard look at what happened to Iraq. Persuasion can be a wonderful thing.”
During the course of 2003, from the first meetings in Gaddafi’s tent in Tripoli in March to the inner sanctum of the Travellers’ Club, both sides knew they wanted the same thing. Following years of anti-Western rhetoric and tit-for-tat terrorist atrocities Gaddafi became convinced the time was ripe for rehabilitation. The process started in the wake of the September 11 attacks when he suggested the US had the right to defend itself and, along with other Arab countries such as Jordan and Syria, Libya has been quietly active in providing intelligence about links with al-Qaeda. In February, Gaddafi obligingly passed heavy prison sentences on over 100 members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were suspected of having links with terrorist groups. Once the Lockerbie problem was solved with an official apology and the payment of compensation to the victims of the 1988 bomb attack on a PanAm airliner, the way was open to normalise links with the rest of the world.
The rehabilitation of Libya has been a marked success and a sign that the war against terrorism will be fought not just with precision weapons but also with diplomacy and economic muscle. Iraq was bombed into submission and its leader Saddam Hussein deposed. Libya escaped that fate, as did Gaddafi, who will stay in power as long as he keeps on the right side of the US. Ahead lies a campaign to deal with the other countries who top the State Department’s list of potential enemies – Iran, Syria and North Korea. Other lesser rogue states also require attention, notably Sudan and Cuba, and there is pressure to deal with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but these are the big three as far as those leading the war against terrorism are concerned.
North Korea poses the clearest threat. Not only is the country unstable and economically bankrupt but its leader Kim Jong-il has gone out of his way to defy the world over the production of nuclear weapons. If the US had not been distracted by the need to deal with Iraq first there is little doubt Kim would have been put at the top of the list. Not only was he was in the process of developing nuclear weapons but his belligerent stance meant the Korean peninsula was always on the brink of war. On the diplomatic front he was usually one step ahead of Washington’s attempts to bring him to heel during the run-up to the war in Iraq when US attention was diverted. First he insisted on bilateral talks with the US, then he insisted these should take place in China, a demand to which the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, was forced to concede.
However, in the wake of the Libyan deal the US is keen to re-engage with North Korea and force it back to the negotiating table to begin the process of decommissioning its potential for making nuclear weapons. A military attack remains a possibility. The Pentagon has drawn up plans for a precision strike on the suspected nuclear facility at Pyongyang, similar to Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s Osirak plant in 1981, but that could prompt Kim into attacking his southern neighbour and starting a regional war. The knowledge that North Korea already has a nuclear weapon has also concentrated minds in Washington.
According to the Sunday Herald’s diplomatic source, this is what makes Kim different from Saddam – he actually has weapons of mass destruction and would be prepared to use them. “By the end of the decade, North Korea will have developed a ballistic missile capable of hitting California. If they are armed with nuclear weapons the threat is obvious and no President could tolerate such a situation. Kim has every reason to spin out the negotiations and to fight hard for concessions.”
The one country which has not so far been brought into the equation is Pakistan, but perversely it is the main link to the nuclear ambitions of the rogue states. Ever since the September 11 attacks, President Musharraf has been viewed as a key ally in the war against al-Qaeda, but, during the same period, Pakistan has been suspected of exporting nuclear and missile technology to Iran and Libya. The allegations have been denied by Musharraf but that has not stopped him ordering the detention of his leading nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was credited with developing Pakistan’s nuclear programme.
Under pressure from the US, Musharraf has also agreed to enter into fresh negotiations with India to settle the border tensions in Kashmir – a meeting with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is scheduled to take place next month – but the pressures inside his own country could explode before the summit takes place.
Musharraf has survived two recent assassination attempts but he is facing growing resentment from his senior commanders and scientists, many of them fundamentalists, for allowing the inspection of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. A tense time lies ahead: as the Pakistani leader found out last week, on the road from Islamabad to Rawalpindi, fighting the global war against terrorism is not a game for sissies.
28 December 2003
sundayherald.com |
