Evil awakening gives new life to terrorism

[African]

Jason Burke argues that far from being a spent force, as George Bush believes, Islamic militancy is gaining in strength

 

Sunday September 7, 2003

The Observer

 

So if its aims are defined in strictly military terms - the termination of the activities of a group of enemy individuals - then the war on terror is going well. In which case why the practice operation for dealing with a dirty bomb in the City of London tomorrow? Why is British Airways considering fitting its planes with anti-missile equipment?

 

Why does Sir John Stevens, Britain's most senior policeman, think, like the Prime Minister, that a serious terrorist attack in Britain is 'inevitable'? Why does no one feel much safer than they did in the days after 11 September?

 

BUSH TOLD the California servicemen that Afghanistan is now 'a friend of the United States'. This is nonsense. There is a small elite in Kabul better disposed towards the US than might usually be expected of Afghans, but most of the residual goodwill felt by the general population has long since evaporated.

 

It was rooted in a hope that things might get better relatively rapidly. For most Afghans things have not improved much. The consequences are obvious. In the past two weeks fierce battles have been raging in south-eastern Afghanistan with a resurgent, reconstituted Taliban-like faction.

 

But the real concern must be Iraq. The problem here is not the Iraqis, who largely have yet to turn against the Americans, but in what the occupation, and the violence associated with it, is doing in the rest of the Islamic world. This is what Bush appears to be unable to comprehend. There is evidence that hundreds of Muslim militants have entered Iraq to join in a holy war against the Americans. The fact that the Iraqis welcomed the US and UK forces is not important to these fanatical volunteers. They believe that, since the Crusades, the West has been committed to the humiliation and subordination of Islam. They see their war as defensive. The American-led anti-terrorist operations have done nothing except confirm them in their world view.

 

Few new militants, however, can be linked to al-Qaeda. They are not on the list of individuals that Bush put in his desk drawer after 11 September. They are young Muslim men for whom the message of bin Laden and the movement of radical thought he represents make sense.

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