Can the West sit down with Al-Qaeda to negotiate the terms of peace, asks Ayman El-Amir* Some analysts have recently begun to think aloud the unthinkable: why can't the West negotiate with Al-Qaeda? Some may view the idea as ludicrous or that it could only be achieved under such stringent conditions that both parties would consider untenable. Al-Qaeda, perhaps more than its perceived enemies, is imbued with a religious doctrine of self-righteousness while what is left of the Bush administration's neo-cons consider their Quixotic global war on terrorism as a crusade. Contemporary history is replete with examples of protracted bloody wars followed by unexpected peace. The context was always different, but the result the same. Why shouldn't this conflict be resolved in the same way? For one thing, the agenda of Al-Qaeda is very complex and that of the Western powers fighting it too rigid. The principled position laid down by the US and its partners is that governments will not negotiate with so-called terrorists but fight them for fear of creating precedents of blackmail. But there have always been exceptions. The US recently underwent direct negotiations with North Korea over the liquidation of the latter's nuclear assets. True, North Korea is not a "terrorist organisation" but it is listed as a "state sponsor of terrorism" in the books of the US State Department. As such, it is accused of supplying US-labelled terrorist organisations with lethal tools and know-how. In the same vein, South Korea negotiated, albeit indirectly, with the Taliban for the successful release of its 23 proselytising hostages. In Nepal, Maoists guerrillas who had waged a long war against the feudal Nepalese regime finally sat down in negotiations and became part of the government in a reformed monarchy. There are even more stark examples where Jewish terrorist organisations in Palestine, the Irgun Tsvai Leumi, Stern and Lehi among others, fought the British mandate administration and terrorised peaceful Palestinians villagers out of their lands to set up what the world today respectfully recognises as an independent and sovereign state. But Hamas, the nationally elected representative government of the Palestinian people that came to power in accordance with the most transparent traditions of Western liberal democracy is regarded as a terrorist organisation because Israel said so. Even in today's 21st century the same adage stands -- today's terrorists could be tomorrow's freedom fighters, and even a legitimate government. Al-Qaeda's agenda is more complex in that its combined doctrine of nationalism, religion and anti-colonialism is a powerful combination that attracts several embryonic factions in far-flung regions, from the self-proclaimed Islamic State organisation in Iraq to the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines. The religious principles of Islam offer a unifying umbrella for disparate groups fighting the last, and probably the most ferocious battle against neo-colonialism and its associated domestic evils of loyalist regimes. The pronouncements of Al-Qaeda are usually made in harsh religious tones that are ominous to both Western countries as well as national regime leaders in Arab countries. But the fact is that, if broken down to its rudimentary elements, Al-Qaeda's doctrine is an anti-colonial manifesto. It was an anti-colonial struggle against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, blessed and abetted by the US, as it is an anti-colonial struggle now against the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, and Israeli massacre of the Palestinian people. From the US point of view, Al-Qaeda is a rebel organisation without a cause, except the destruction of Western civilisation. From the perspective of Al-Qaeda, the US is the world's leading colonial power that is plundering the wealth of the Arab nation, desecrating Muslim lands by planting military bases there, and contaminating the culture of the Islamic nation. It is not an unprecedented confrontation. However, it is dramatically presented only from the perspective of the terror of 9/11, the sixth anniversary of which was so professionally stage- directed recently by US media and public relations gurus. While it is not a matter of competing numbers or compelling tragedy, no one in the US commemorates the Vietnam War in which 3,000,000 Vietnamese were killed in a decade-long colonial conquest that had absolutely no rationale except the draconian whims of Cold War strategists like Henry Kissinger. To Kissinger, the lives of millions of people in faraway lands were expendable pawns in a game of chess with the former Soviet Union. Only the 59,000 Americans who lost their lives in that senseless war are tenuously remembered on Memorial Day. For the US, oil stakes in the Middle East are too high to risk appearing defeated in the ill-fated campaign in Iraq. Alan Greenspan, respected chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board for 18 years, stated in a new book, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." The resistance movement in that country and beyond smell American blood and sense US fatigue. US allies in the region are worried about an imminent US departure and the impact it would have on their loyalist regimes. The so-called "moderate" Arab regimes are regarded, by both Al-Qaeda and their own oppressed populations, as cohorts of the US and its policies in the region. The only option they have is to tighten their oppressive grip on the raging masses. So Al-Qaeda has two targets: US presence in the region and its allied regimes. Global, regional and national odds are lined up against Al-Qaeda. Its military actions, where innocent civilians become the victims, or the incitement of sectarian violence leave little sympathy for it among moderate Arabs, and none in the West. Meanwhile, the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp, Abu Ghraib, or the US extraordinary rendition programmes have created more enemies than sympathisers for the US and its collaborators in Arab countries. Revolutionary violence and extremism, both in ideology and in action, are usually the hallmark of violent uprising, especially when it is nurtured by religious fundamentalism. For Al-Qaeda, its revolutionary violence in the name of Islam is a source of both strength and weakness. Its ideology is a rallying call for jihadists, but it also ties its own hands. Al-Qaeda and Arab nationalists share the same objectives of evicting the US and its allies from Iraq, liquidating US military presence in the Gulf region, forcing the withdrawal of NATO's ragtag army from Afghanistan and overthrowing US- supported dictatorial Arab regimes that have long suppressed and tortured the people in whose name they are presumed to govern. That, of course, is a tall order that may take time to meet. But on the other hand, no one can say that Al-Qaeda, or for that matter the Taliban, is retreating. If anything, Al-Qaeda has overreached itself. It has inspired every rebellion against oppression and injustice, even when that movement does not carry the Al-Qaeda label. Terrorism has become the weapon of the weak and the oppressed. The Algerian National Liberation Front used it to the extreme against French colonialists in social clubs, restaurants, cafés and on the streets. And it is banal to reiterate that the US's opposition to a universally acknowledged distinction between legitimate national liberation movements fighting against foreign military occupation, as in Palestine, and plain terrorism. Discussions about this distinction were suspended after the events of 11 September, much to the satisfaction of Israel. The Bush administration lumped together legitimate national resistance with all acts of violence, not realising that it was giving free rein to all acts of terrorism. US withdrawal from Iraq and the liquidation of its military assets there may open a small window of opportunity to have some back-channel discussion about the future of the region and legitimate Western expectations. The argument that US withdrawal from Iraq would leave a huge vacuum that would only be filled by chaos and civil war is not true. It is a jerk-knee reaction of the embattled Iraqi government taking refuge in the American-fortified Green Zone as well as collaborator regimes. There are enough powers in the region to form an Arab-Iranian coalition for peace that would end national strife and ensure stability in the oil-rich region. But that will depend on US acknowledgement that its misadventure in Iraq is the last hurrah of a neo- colonial power and for Al-Qaeda to turn itself into a populist movement by winning all moderate forces of the region yearning for change. * The writer is a former correspondent for Al-Ahram in Washington DC. He also served as director of the UN Radio and Television in New York.
