The United States is failing in its war on terrorism, having never clearly defined what the war was against, writes Diaa Rashwan It has been 10 months since the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington so traumatically changed the face of world politics. The United States, meanwhile, has been having obvious trouble addressing the so-called terrorist threat, both at home and abroad. The failure of the US security services to anticipate the 11 September attacks have even on occasion been referred to as "Bin Laden-Gate", in a reference to former US President Richard Nixon's attempt 30 years ago to cover up the break-in he had ordered at the Watergate Building in Washington, then the site of the rival Democratic Party conference. And things are not getting any easier: there are numerous difficulties facing the US security services with regard to the terror threat, many of them related to the vagueness with which Washington, perhaps intentionally, has defined that threat. "Terror", as currently viewed by US politicians and media, is anything having to do with Islam, from extremist groups to resistance organisations, and from governments to education systems. Facing an enemy so broad and so omnipresent, small wonder that US security services are at a loss. The data they have to amass is unmanageable, the sifting of information dispiriting, if not outright exhausting, and the vagueness of the final goal deprives them of victory in any tangible sense. It also gives their enemies the chance to deny them their defeat. For, as defined by US strategists, the war on terrorism is global and open-ended with a focus on Islamic nations, and this loose definition, while it may give the politicians freedom of movement and a larger margin for error, makes victory virtually impossible. It deprives the security services of any focus, stopping them from devising a coherent policy in the war. The means employed in the war on terrorism have also turned out to be as incoherent as the target. Washington is now asking Islamic countries to change their teaching curricula and threatening the use of sanctions in order to force states to support US war efforts. It has not ruled out assassinations, or the use of internationally banned weapons, in its assault on its perceived enemies. Indeed, it is encouraging its allies to be just as unscrupulous in their bids to eliminate so-called terrorism. The coordination of a global war on terrorism has proved to be a daunting task. Intelligence services worldwide have been told to cooperate in the search for so-called terrorists. Rivalry and political sensitivity have been the inevitable outcomes of such a universal quest for global intelligence. And politics are getting in the way: the closer association of US and Israeli policies in the war on terrorism, for example, has altered the course of events in the entire Middle East. The routine depiction of Palestinian resistance fighters as a threat to US interests and global peace may please the Israelis, but it does little to help the United States. Israel's escalating brutality against the Palestinians, and its continued occupation of their land, provides more, not less, motivation for attacks of the type the Americans have come to dread. Any attack on Iraq would be equally disastrous. Until recently, US security specialists saw Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qa'eda as part of a global terrorist organisation, with operatives ready to strike everywhere at the orders of a centralised command. However, two months ago the Americans seem to have accepted the European view that Al- Qa'eda is actually nothing more than a network and that the violent Islamist groups have no unified command, but communicate and cooperate whenever it suits their different purposes. The fact that violent Islamist groups moved in tandem to attack US targets with such venom had everything to do with the political backdrop of the attacks, particularly the deterioration in the situation in the Middle East and the international campaigns aiming to limit the influence of extremist groups. One further obvious problem with the US war on terrorism is the tendency of US officials to blame others for failures in their own security policies. Soon after 11 September, the Americans harangued Saudi officials for the spread of violent religious fundamentalism. Egypt was next in line for blame, as was evident from remarks made by Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Select Committee, on 20 May. It used to be that Third World countries were masters in the art of passing the buck; now, it seems that the world's sole remaining superpower is doing the same thing, and with considerable flair. The United States has so far mismanaged its war on terrorism on more than one level, having defined the war so loosely as to make it impossible to fight and having blamed innocent people, and those who defend them, for terrorism. In this way, it has succeeded only in perpetrating further injustice, and has failed, too, to gather accurate and timely intelligence. With the exception of Zacarias Moussaoui, a 34-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent, no one has yet been indicted in connection with the 11 September attacks, not even the notorious Bin Laden. The United States has bombed the Taliban out of existence, flown aircraft loads of presumed Taliban and Al-Qa'eda fighters to inhuman incarceration in the Caribbean, gathered truckloads of evidence from Afghanistan, and still it cannot find enough evidence to prosecute any suspects. Washington expects the war on terrorism to be infinite in scope and duration and that all countries worldwide will fall dutifully into line on its side. It also expects that its own intelligence services will not crack under pressure. However, unless it revises these expectations, its troubles have only just begun. The writer is an expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and managing editor of CPSS's State of Religion in Egypt Report, issued annually.
