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Issue 265, Friday 27 May 2011 - 23 Jumad al-Akhar 1432 The world after Usama: the ‘dim’ prospects for sanity? By Abdelwahab El-Affendi The big question following the demise of Usama Bin Ladin, the man whose name became synonymous with terror, is not how did he escaped detection for so long, given that he had been also the most hunted man in history. And that is no small question, needless to say. For this was no small time crook, nor a notorious but faceless terrorist, like Carlos the Jackal. He was a man who assiduously courted publicity, and his face is known to almost every individual on this planet, not to mention being of unusual height. Even if we accept the argument that Pakistani intelligence has been harbouring him, this poses more questions than it answers. For then the legend becomes that of the super-capabilities of the Pakistani intelligence to deceive the whole world, including its own Government, for so long. Nor is the question about the bizarre spectacle of the world’s sole superpower treating the demise of a pathetic fugitive as if it was the equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is significant of course, for it seems to point to Al Qa’ida’s main achievement: causing the whole world to go insane. But may be the core question is this: Why did this rag-tag outfit survive, and even continue to expand for so long, given its crude unsophisticated rhetoric, its obnoxious behaviour, its ugly sectarianism and the tendency of its various “franchised” affiliates to alienate almost everybody and to engage in vicious infighting? Hitherto, the search for answers focused on the ideology which appeared to fire this movement. Oceans of ink (and the electronic equivalent) have been spilt on “archaeological” explorations going back to the Middle Ages to try to explain why so many young people around the world were so intent on self-destructive violence. That was, and remains, a misguided quest. Al Qa’ida continued to receive support and gain adherents in spite of its ideology, and not because of it. The majority of Muslims find its vicious sectarianism, callous narrow-mindedness and pedantic fixation with details at the expense of the whole picture, extremely infuriating, and often repulsive. But this was never their selling point. It was their anti-Western rhetoric and their spectacular terror operations. The immediate post-Cold War period was ushered in the Middle East not with the cheering which accompanied the dismantling of the Berlin War, but with televised mayhem: the Palestinian intifada being brutally put down, Iraq devastated and was languishing under the most inhuman blockade in modern history, and conflict stalking the region from Afghanistan to Algeria. Dictatorships flourished, freedom withered and hopes died. Somehow, America and the West became associated with this dark era: their troops were stalking the region, their planes enforced Iraq’s siege, their funds and weapons were used to “break the bones” of Palestinian protesters, and their diplomacy and cash propped up dictators who victimised their own people. Rightly or wrongly, “America” became the enemy, the face of evil. What if a hero were to emerge to challenge this villain of the piece? And there was no shortage of volunteers. But most preferred to fight their own local wars: Hamas in Palestine, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Kashmiris in Jammu & Kashmir, and so on. In this respect, Al Qa’ida also started as a localised enterprise, with Bin Ladin obsessed with driving American troops from his native Saudi Arabia, while his later associate, the Egyptian Ayman Al-Zawahiri, has also emerged within a group whose ideology distinctly called for targeting the “proximate enemy”, meaning the dictatorial regimes at home, rather than Israel or America. However, with both failing to get sufficient support for their local wars, and forced into exile, they decided to make a virtue out of a necessity and declare war on America. For Bin Ladin, this was a necessity for an additional reason. His Saudi supporters shared the ideology of the monarchy, which enforced the strictures of ‘Wahhabi’ Islam with little compromise, at least at home. To ask them to a fight against an “Islamic” monarchy would have been a tall order, but to direct their ire against the “infidel Americans” who occupied the “Prophet’s Peninsula” was an easier sell. He had also hoped to re-direct the anger of the varied local insurgencies towards America, and thus secure global support for his local war. The success was limited. Many groups refused to join the new “International”, and some withdrew after joining. While the group appeared to expand into some new regions, such as Iraq, Yemen and North Africa, this was even more disastrous for it. Its new adherents were the worst advertisement for any movement: brutal and brutish, maliciously sectarian and pathologically bloodthirsty, they did manage to provoke a few revolutions, against them. That Bin Ladin’s campaign has gone disastrously wrong can be seen from the reaction to his killing. His supporters, vowing to avenge his death, rounded up on a few hapless Pakistanis and managed to gun down one Saudi diplomat. A group which gained its reputation from claiming to be the one to humiliate America bring this arrogant super- power to its knees, ended up venting its frustration on defenceless locals. The fate of the group had demonstrated the bankruptcy of the terror route, the adoption of which was in any case a signal of failure to attract a mass following in the first place. The movement tried to exploit anti- Western and anti-American sentiments to gain a following, and used its terror attacks as an advertisement that it could deliver painful blows to the “enemy” and force it to concede. In this it followed a similar pattern of behaviour adopted by revolutionaries the world over, from Latin American and South East Asian revolutionaries to Arab and African radicals. Like Communism or Arab Nationalism, the ideology of the movement was a “resource” rather a driving force. However, the opposition to foreign hegemony is both. That is why even scoundrels like Saddam Hussein (and more recently Libya’s Qaddafi) resort to using it, usually at the wrong moment. The masses usually liked the rhetoric, but preferred it when coupled with success on the battlefield. It is no use shouting abuse at America and Israel, and then ending up putting the country under foreign boots, as has happened with Nasser in Egypt, Saddam in Iraq, Asad in Syria and (to a lesser extent), Hamas in Palestine. Only Hizbullah in Lebanon has, up to now, delivered relative “success”, and thus managed to win support even though the majority of Arabs does not share - or like - its “Khumaynist” ideology. Even before the recent “Arab Spring”, which showed many Arab youths that peaceful mass action is the shortest route to freedom and dignity, Al Qa’ida’s nihilism has convinced many that the route of violence and extremism was a veritable cul-de-sac. It remains to see if others can learn the older lessons, from Central America to Vietnam, and from Tehran to Santiago: that foreign aggression and support for dictatorships with the illusion that this could deliver security ends, up as Condoleezza Rice once said, offering neither stability nor security. Let us hope bin Ladin’s disappearance could restore some sanity to the world. But as Ludwig Wittgenstein has said about the possibility his work bringing enlightenment to the world: “But of course that is unlikely.” Abdelwahab El-Affendi FRSA, Co-ordinator, Democracy and Islam Programme, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster
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