POLITICS: Global, Mideast Insecurity Rise with Suicide Attacks

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Mushahid Hussain

ISLAMABAD, May 19 2003 (IPS) - Just more than a week ago, U.S. President George W Bush was triumphantly telling audiences in the United States that ‘’the back of al-Qaeda is broken and we are winning the war on terror”.

Just more than week ago, U.S. President George W Bush was triumphantly telling audiences in the United States that ‘’the back of al-Qaeda is broken and we are winning the war on terror”.

But the orchestration in the May 12 attacks in Saudi Arabia, which were carefully choreographed strikes in the heart of Riyadh’s foreign enclave and whose implicate continue to reverberate in the Middle East and beyond, seems to taken both the United States and Saudi Arabia by surprise.

Then on Friday night, five suicide bomb attacks hit Morocco’s commercial capital of Casablanca, in a move that U.S. officials and other officials suspect could be also be the work of al-Qaeda.

These acts of terror come in the context of U.S. policy, whose accent had shifted from the military to diplomacy in the aftermath of the Iraq war.

At the time of the Riyadh blasts, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was visiting the region following the apparent conclusion of a debate over U..S. policy after Iraq, where the more balanced and realistic leadership of the State Department seems to have won out over the ideologically-zealous, Muslim-bashing hawks that dominate the Pentagon.

Instead of militarily moving in the Middle East on a ‘hit list’, the endeavour is to use diplomacy through a carrot-and-stick approach.

Powell has been negotiating in Syria and Lebanon, and Pentagon’s Gen James Garner has been downgraded to accommodate the State Department’s civilian nominee for viceroy of Iraq, Paul Bremer.

Likewise, quiet talks with Iran have apparently resulted in allowing the prominent Tehran-based Iraqi cleric, Ayatollah Baqer al Hakim, to return to Iraq, as well as the disarmament of the Iraq-based, anti-Iran Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organisation.

What is Iran’s quid for the American quo remains to be seen, but it will probably be evident in the Iranians moderating the Hizbollah in Lebanon, especially their military campaign against Israel. It is no accident that Iranian President Mohammad Khatami visited Lebanon, where Hizbollah has its headquarters.

But despite the shift to diplomacy, away from the military, the Middle East and the world at large are going to be a more volatile place.

Take, for instance, the issue of weapons of mass destruction. Ironically, in the aftermath of the Iraq war, despite tall talk of eliminating ‘weapons of mass destruction’, the nuclear factor has assumed greater importance.

For the same sin, Iraq was penalised but North Korea, which is assumed to have nuclear weapons, has been treated with kid gloves. In fact, the U.S. weapons inspectors are being asked to return home after failing to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – the ostensible reason for the U.S.-led invasion.

In a surprise move on May 9, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee lifted a decade-old ban to resume research and development of low-yield, high-technology nuclear weapons for possible use in a future war.

The Riyadh blasts also enable the United States to put more pressure on Saudi Arabia, which is clearly a ‘casualty’ of the Iraq war in that it seems to have been downgraded in U.S. strategic priorities.

One of the first U.S.actions after Iraq was to announce the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel from Saudi Arabia after a stay of over 13 years, an act both symbolic as well as substantive in indicating a move away from Saudi Arabia to Iraq.

During the Iraq war, the Saudis had opposed the U.S. military action and refused to allow the Central Command to use the state-of the-art Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh.

Earlier this month, Bush unveiled a major initiative for the socio-economic and political restructuring of the Middle East, which is unlikely to be well received by Middle Eastern ruling elites which are either absolute monarchies or republican family dynasties.

Saudi Arabia would be a key target for such ‘reforms’, more so since an influential section of the U.S. Establishment blames Saudi Arabia for Sep. 11.

What do the blasts foretell about the Middle East – supposedly the centre of gravity in the U.S. ‘war on terror’?

First, the Iraq war had nothing to do with the ‘war on terror’ or the quest for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. For many in the Muslim world, the Iraq war was about oil, Israel and reshaping the Middle East political map, hence, terrorism remains a potent threat, as Riyadh has so brutally demonstrated.

Second, U.S. interests are threatened not by Muslim regimes or rulers, who can either be contained, coopted or crushed – as happened with Saddam Hussein or the Taliban or even Yasser Arafat, who has been sidelined through his newly appointed Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

The United States faces a new kind of enemy nameless, faceless, stateless with the skill, will and motivation to strike through a weapon that has no remedy in its arsenal, namely, suicide bombing.

It is the suicide bomber who has the capacity to destabilise in a massive manner, as Riyadh, Palestine or Chechnya have demonstrated, and here no Middle East state or government has control over these suicide bombers.

Following U.S. media reports that al-Qaeda fugitive leader Osama bin Laden had masterminded the Riyadh terror strikes, these could indicate an unusually high level of sophistication and organisation despite the U.S. worldwide manhunt since Sep. 11, 2001.

Third, now that Saudi Arabia is longer the lynchpin in U.S. Middle East strategy, the United States may need to review its Middle East strategy lest it will end up biting more than it can chew.

Iraq and Afghanistan remain volatile. Palestine is unsettled. Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are nervous over U.S designs which to them seem to be Israel-driven.

This is all happening as Bush faces an upcoming presidential election next year, one he intends to fight on the flag of patriotism imposed on the sands and deserts of the Middle East while protecting, and promoting Israel, much to the chagrin of Middle Eastern governments and people.

This dichotomy is widening the cleavage between popular perceptions in the Middle East and U.S. official policy there. Riyadh would have widened that yawning chasm.