QandO

March 26, 2004

Going it alone
Posted by McQ

Interesting article by Ariel Cohen (Heritage Foundation). According to Cohen, there are presently three models of Anti-Terrorism at work in the world at present.

1. Bureaucratic

2. Keystone Cops

3. Robust anti-terror operations

Which is the most effective? You decide.

Bureaucratic

It has been articulated by Javier Solana, a Spaniard who is European Union foreign policy chief. "Europe is not at war," Solana said. "We must oppose terrorism energetically, but we must not change our way of life. We are democrats who love freedom."

Its essence?

European heads of state are adopting a declaration of solidarity with Spain and a call to jointly fight terrorism and "root causes of terrorism -- conflicts, poverty, deprivation and frustration."

IOW, "its not their fault, its our fault that they're conflicted, poor, deprived and frustrated. WE must do more".

Never mind the fact that their leader comes from anything but a poor background, their number two man is a medical doctor and all of the 9/11 participants from al-Queda were from middle and upper class backgrounds.

The roots of terrorism, ala al-Queda is religious fanaticism brought to you by the Wahabbi sect of Islam. Quell the fanaticism and you quell the terrorism. But negotiations and bureaucratic solutions are not going to work.

European solution? Approach it with bureauocracy and treat it as a 'law enforcement issue'.

The other term for this approach is 'appeasement'.

Keystone Cops

Per Cohen, this is now in practice in Pakistan ...

where 7,000 troops have failed to storm an Al Qaeda compound which harbored up to 500 terrorists. President Pervez Musharraf has announced that a high value target, possibly Al Qaeda number two, Aiman Al Zawahiri, has been trapped. Unfortunately, the Pakistanis suffered casualties, got themselves ambushed, and fought to standstill. They are now negotiating with local tribes in hopes to find an honorable way out.

The Pakistani army, prodded by the US, failed to bring to bear an overwhelming artillery, armor and air power to finish Al Qaeda off. There was a great intelligence failure. Pakistan's ISI -- the spy agency originally with ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda -- supposedly did not know that the besieged compound had a mile-long escape tunnel. It is also possible that Al Qaeda sympathizers inside Pakistani military and intelligence service intentionally sabotaged the operation -- and their president's orders.

This approach almosts insists upon allowing an escape vs. closure. Government influence in the border area is tenuous at best, ISI ties with the Taliban and al Qaeda probably still exist and the best effort to be made is probably not being made by Pakistan. You'll see some of this model in other Arab Muslim countries where they are being pressured by the west to attack terrorism, but their hearts really aren't into the job. Thus you end up with operations which look more like they were planned by the Keystone Cops than a competant civilian/military authority.

Robust anti-terror operations

The most recent example of this is the Israeli attack on Hamas leader, Sheikh Yassin.

Such an operation takes months of meticulous intelligence preparation and coordination between high tech assets, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Israeli Air Force helicopters. This operation was akin to elimination of a senior Al Qaeda operative responsible for USS Cole attack in Yemen by an American Predator UAV.

Bottom line: If the US is to pursue the war on terror with any success, it will have to do two things. One, continue to use the last model and two, go it alone (in most cases). While it may be able to partner up with other intel services to share information, its obvious it can't rely on Europe (they've pretty well decided that sticking their heads in the sand is the most prudent 'defense'). Its also obvious that using proxy states to fight the war will be met with very limited success.

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