Issue No. 603
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12 - 18 September 2002 Issue No. 603 Heritage |
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No exit from the zero-sum game
The current global crisis, pitting the United States against so-called terror, mixes a terrifying reality with mythic overtones, creating the possibility of an open-ended conflict without the possibility of compromise, writes Diaa Rashwan*
The attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington one year ago created an international crisis like no other in living memory. The Second World War, the Korean War, the 1956 Suez War and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis were all qualitatively different, the crisis caused by the 11 September attacks creating its own dynamics, its own ambiguities, its peculiarly unprecedented course. Why?
One reason for the anomalous nature of this crisis was the incident that triggered it. This was, after all, the first time since 1812 that the United States had come under attack on its own territory. Moreover, the attackers did not bring their own weapons with them, but rather turned US civilian passenger planes into missiles directed with horrific precision at two symbols of American economic and military might, taking America and the world by surprise. In addition, the protagonists in this particular crisis were notably unequal both in size and in power: Al- Qa'eda, assuming that it launched the attacks, is no match for the United States, not even if backed by every militant Islamist group on earth.
However, it is above all the unprecedented hegemony of the United States in the new world order that has made this crisis different from all that have gone before. Gone is pre-Second World War multi-polarity; gone is American-Soviet bipolarity. The September 2001 attacks happened at a time when the United States was the unchallenged superpower on the world scene, and this has affected the way the crisis has developed. It has also affected the way the US has responded to the attacks, and it continues to do so.
In our region, too, the scene at the time of the September 2001 attacks was different from that at any time over the past 10 years. Ariel Sharon, having triggered the second Intifada through his visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in September 2000, acceded to the Israeli premiership four months later and proceeded to provoke the Palestinians into committing further suicide attacks through continued oppression and the assassination of Palestinian leaders. The similarity between the Palestinian suicide bombings, mostly conducted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the 11 September attacks spawned many erroneous comparisons between the Palestinians, who are fighting Israeli occupation, and the 11 September attackers.
Click to view captionAfghanistan Independence Day At the core of the international crisis triggered by the 11 September attacks is terror. However, "terror", as understood by the United States, could not be more ambiguous, or less misleading. Terror, for the American and Western media, can refer to anything, from the actions of Al-Qa'eda to the Muslim peoples and their culture, and therefore the United States, in declaring war on terror, has actually declared war on anything that fits its definition of the term, even by association. As a result, the war against terror has taken on mythical proportions, becoming a war without geographical or temporal limits. Its target has become the Islamic and Arab countries, its methods ranging from changes in school curricula, to economic sanctions, to the intermittent use of internationally banned weapons, including cluster bombs.
Curiously enough, the foes in this new crisis seem to mirror each other in their views of how the world is composed and how conflicts should be tackled. US President George W Bush and Osama Bin Laden agree that the world is divided into two camps -- the good and the evil. In Bush's terminology, the good are those who are "against terror" (and therefore "with us"), and the bad are those who are "with terror" (and therefore "against us"). For Bin Laden, the good are the believers, and the bad are the non-believers. Both men love to use the term "terror". In almost every speech he has made since the 11 September attacks, Bush has declared terror to be a menace to civilisation and has promised to exterminate it. The leader of Al-Qa'eda, meanwhile, has referred to two kinds of terror -- a malign kind, "practiced by America in Palestine and Iraq," and a benign kind targeting America in order "to lift the injustice of aggression and make America stop aiding Israel, which is killing our sons".
For all their political and doctrinal differences, both Bush and Bin Laden have given the conflict religious undertones. Both believe they are fighting a "just war". While Bush has retracted his definition of the war as a "crusade", he still sees the conflict as one between good and evil. This radical simplification of world politics is to be credited to former US President Ronald Reagan, who used to refer to the former Soviet Union in similar terms. Bin Laden on the other hand, being a religious fanatic, uses clearer terms, saying that "those who try to cover up the obvious fact that the whole world, through its actions, has made clear -- namely that this war is a religious war -- are deceivers, trying to divert attention from the truth about the conflict." Bin Laden sees the conflict as the "fiercest campaign" against Islam since the time of Prophet Mohamed.
The two sides in the conflict accuse each other of the intentional slaughter of innocent civilians. President Bush blames Bin Laden for the 11 September attacks and for the double bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. Bin Laden blames the United States for killing innocent Afghans, Iraqis and Palestinians through acts of war, sanctions and a proxy war carried out by Israel. A lack of concern for civilian casualties on both sides is a feature of this conflict.
Finally, the two sides see the conflict as a zero-sum game, a winner-takes-all situation. They see no room for compromise, and their final aim is to eradicate the enemy. Both see it as an open-ended conflict, including many battles, and they are as one in considering that it will right all wrongs and end all evils.
However, what worse evil could there be than an open-ended conflict with no possibility of compromise?
* The writer is an expert at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
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