TERRORISM: All Terrorism is Local

[DarthZeth]

The latest Terrorism article from strategypage.com

TERRORISM: All Terrorism is Local


December 2, 2004: Just as "all politics is local," so, it would seem that all terrorism is as well these days. While much attention is paid to international terrorism, most of the actual terrorist activity is taking place locally, carried out by local terrorists. Fears that Osama bin Laden is planning devastating new attacks from a cave headquarters in Pakistan have taken a distant second place to local terrorist organizations that are very active, and under heavy attack.

Al Qaeda was cited as a growing threat until September, 2001, after which al Qaeda was pronounced "the" threat. But since then, little violence has been traced back to al Qaeda. In addition, many of the long time terrorist threats (the IRA in Britain, PKK in Turkey, ETA in Spain, the LTTE in South Asia, Zapatistias in Mexico, and right wing militias in the United States), suddenly became very quiet. These groups don't want to risk antagonizing an angry United States and being accused of links with al Qaeda. But local Islamic terrorists in several other areas are as active as ever. These include the groups in Israel, India (Kashmir), Indonesia and Pakistan. The Islamic radicals in Algeria have been declining, but that was because of decade of government effort. Maoist terrorists in Nepal are increasing their activities, but this is seen as a spillover of Maoist rebels that had been operating in neighboring India for decades.

We also tend to forget that there are criminal groups engaging in terrorism (usually in the support of extortion schemes) all the time. Gangsters set off more bombs and kill more people in the each year than do political terrorists. But the gangsters we can understand. It's business. It's always there, and the cops are always on top of it. Religious and political terrorism is another matter. Or is it? The current terrorism in Iraq is largely driven by Sunni Arabs who want to be back in control of the country. Saddam Hussein basically ran Iraq as a criminal enterprise, often enlisting purely criminal gangs as allies and helpers. Saddam used a lot of terror. But since he was running a police state, no one tagged Saddam as a terrorist. He was just another nasty dictator. But a segment of the Sunni Arab gunmen in Iraq proclaim they are doing it all in the name of Islam. So suddenly they are part of an international Islamic terror network.

It doesn't work that way, although if you read enough novels, play enough video games and watch enough movies, you get the impression that there is an international Islamic terrorist conspiracy that James Bond would be hard pressed to deal with. In reality, most of the terrorist deaths are from local groups, fighting over local issues, led by local leaders and sustained by local sources of support (money, weapons, food, technical advice.)

In Iraq, it's the unemployed Saddam enforcers and Baath Party hacks who are organizing and leading the terrorism. The much smaller amount of al Qaeda activity was put together by local al Qaeda members. None of the old al Qaeda leadership (most of whom are now either dead or hiding out in Pakistan) is involved. Same with the upsurge of al Qaeda terrorism in Saudi Arabia. It's all local guys who could, or would, not go to foreign countries to do their business. And at home they promptly made
themselves immensely unpopular by bringing their Islamic war back home. The reaction in Saudi Arabia has been very violent, with several local al Qaeda leaders getting themselves killed or captured in the last 18 months.

The American invasion of Iraq is said to have inspired al Qaeda, and brought forth more recruits. Americans in Iraq are said to have made more Moslems hate the West. For those who bothered to notice, there were plenty of Moslems who hated the west before early 2003, or late 2001 for that matter. What the invasion of Iraq did was force many Moslem, and Western, governments to get more active in dealing with Islamic radicals and the terrorism some of them are so fond of. In the last three years, al Qaeda has all but ceased to exist as an organizations. More importantly, Moslems are facing up to Islamic terrorism as never before. All of a sudden, Moslems are asking hard questions about why most of the terrorism in the world is being carried out by Moslems. Unthinkable subjects, like problems or flaws within Islamic countries, is now openly discussed in the Moslem media.

The problem of Islamic terrorism isn't international, but local. And so are the solutions.