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A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 16, 2001
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Voices
of Muslim Feminists
Mokhiber/Weissman
Kill,
Kill, Kill
November 15, 2001
George
Monbiot
Blasting
Our Way
Toward Peace
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens
Mind-Meld
and Hot Bodies
Steve
Perry
Afghan
Puzzle Palace
RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
Browne
Preventing
Future Terrorism
November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
Day, 2001
Rep. Ron
Paul
Expanding
NATO
Is a Bad Idea
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
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Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
November 9, 2001
Karen Snell
Torture By
Proxy
John Troyer
A
New Kind of Activism
Tariq Ali
Q &
A About the War
Michael
Colby
Schoolgirl
Gets Booted
for Anti-war Views
November 8, 2001
Mokhiber/Weissman
The
Cipro Rip-Off
Mitchel Cohen
The Smear Campaign
Against Nancy Oden
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
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Terror
and Empire by Robin Blackburn
A CounterPunch
Special Report
Robin Blackburn
is former editor of New
Left Review, author of the renowned two-volume history
of colonial
slavery and currently visiting professor at The New School,
New York. CounterPunch is proud to publish Robin's booklength
report, Terror and Empire, the first extended radical
analysis of the post September 11 world, what the terror war
is all about, and how a just war on terror could be fought and
won.
Chapter One
The Field of Battle
It is inherent in the concept of a terrorist act
that it aims at an effect very much larger than the direct physical
destruction it causes. Proponents of what used to be called the
'propaganda of the deed' also believed that in the illuminating
glare of terror the vulnerability of a corrupt order would be
starkly revealed. Once corruption and oppression were stripped
away, a sacred or natural order--the nation, the religious community,
the people--would come into its own.
The instigators of September 11 brought
off a far more spectacular coup than any exponent of the propaganda
of the deed, threaten more than a dozen of the world's most autocratic
and corrupt rulers and aim to summon to arms a religious community
of well over a billion people. The resources disposed of by these
men transcend those traditionally associated with terrorism and
are closer to those of a small state, but a state without boundaries
whose headquarters hops from country to country.
Given the extent of the destruction wrought
by the September 11 attack it is sobering to realise that the
effect aimed at is qualitatively larger, namely that of re-ordering
world politics around a 'clash of civilisations', allowing the
Islamic world to free itself of all infidel trammels. Whether
the strategic director of the Al Qaeda network is Osama bin Laden,
Ayman al-Zawahiri or someone else, their aim from the outset
was to provoke the United States into a counter-reaction that
would alienate Muslim opinion; to expose the hypocrisy of the
hereditary and autocratic rulers of the Muslim world; to create
conditions in which the forces of Islamic jihad could seize or
manipulate power in one or another of the larger or more significant
Muslim states.
The new Caliphates at which they aim
might appear a medieval fantasy but are to be equipped with the
military and financial resources of modernity. They urge believers
to consider the awesome power of Muslim leaders equipped with
Islamic virtue, oil and nuclear weapons. Given the frustrated
or desperate condition of much of the Muslim world, this is a
message that has great resonance even amongst Muslims who are
uneasy at, or repelled by, terror actions. The message targets
the military actions and dispositions of the United States and
Israel, especially as they are deemed to encroach on Muslim holy
places, but it is also aimed at the existing governments of the
Islamic world, seen as pawns of the West.
The September 11 attack invited a response
and Al Qaeda did little to cover its tracks. The leaders of Al
Qaeda, and those close to them in the Taliban leadership, may
have felt that they needed to widen the conflict and escape the
problems of famine and drought. The latter were forcing them
into dependency on the international aid agencies and the US
anti-drug program. In such desperate circumstances the goal of
Al Qaeda was probably to draw the United States into the Afghan
minefield while boosting its position elsewhere in the Muslim
world.
The US president responded to September
11 by proclaiming a global, US-led 'war on terrorism'. Washington
sought every conceivable ally or partner but insisted on retaining
complete control of its 'war'. The UN and the Security Council
were asked to support the US effort, and each of their members
to help in whatever way they could, but there was to be no formal
anti-terrorism coalition and no supranational organisation to
embody it. If this is the new 'cold war', as some have suggested,
it is very differently structured. On one side there is the world's
most powerful state, with its 20th century weapons systems and
a global system of alliances. On the other there is a terror
network of perhaps no more than a few thousand men, acting as
a self-proclaimed 'Muslim vanguard', but occasionally able to
ignite the resentments and frustrations of tens or even hundreds
of millions in the Islamic world. At the height of the Cold War
the Communist states ruled one third of the world's population,
had military means that seemed a match for those of its global
competitor and believed that they could beat the capitalist west
at its own game of economic growth. Al Qaeda may have the economic
and military resources of a statelet but it aims to shape the
thinking of a civilisation. Its members are drawn from many nationalities
and have been active in Central Asia, the Balkans, Europe, North
America, Kashmir, China, Indonesia and the Phillippines as well
as the Middle East and Africa. Its ideology is fuelled by a sense
of injury and wounded pride rather than material aspiration.
It is virulently anti-infidel and misogynist, anti-secular without
being at all anti-capitalist, and egalitarian without being democratic.
Islamic civilisation has always left great scope for mercantile
capitalism. The neo-fundamentalism of the eighties and nineties,
forged in a battle with godless Communism and in reaction to
royalist bureaucracy and corruption, accentuated this legacy
by basing itself on strong and responsible Islamic business and
faith-based charity. While prepared to work with a variety of
Islamic political authorities the project of Al Qaeda transcends
such boundaries aiming to unite the faithful against the infidels
who have insulted and oppressed Islam.
In World War II liberal capitalism and
autocratic Communism fought as allies against fascism. But in
the postwar period the West feared a loss of control in the Middle
East and so it allied with the most conservative forces in the
Islamic world. The Saudi and Iranian monarchies were chosen as
the strategic allies needed to protect Middle Eastern oil resources
while secular nationalists like Mossadegh in Iran or Kassem in
Iraq were destabilised and replaced. In fact the Western system
of alliances is not simply a relic of the Cold War but rather
a palimpsest that reflects, layer on layer, a longer history
and a colonialism that mummified an extraordinary collection
of archaic or pseudo-archaic regimes. This embraces Saudi Arabia
with its 30,000-strong Royal Family, the Shaikhs of Bahrein,
Qattar and Kuwait, the Sultan of Oman, and the Emirates--boasting
the world's longest-serving head of state, Shaikh Sakir al-Qasimi
of Ras al-Khaimah, who ascended his throne in 1948. When we add
to those the Sultan of Brunei in the South China sea it is as
if oil is a pickling fluid akin to formaldehyde projecting into
the 21st century simulacra of the Anciens Regimes of former times.
Pakistan, with its notorious 'feudals', does not have oil but
enjoys an intimate pact with the oil sheikhdoms. The paradox
here for liberal, bourgeois and nationalist forces in the Middle
East was that the power that should have been their great ally,
the United States, actually blocked them at every turn and preferred
to do business with royal absolutists.
The US-sponsored Arabian and Gulf regime
associates the West with corruption, autocracy and stagnation
at a time when there is a yearning for a new start in the Arab
world. The dilemma of US policy is that it understandably wishes
to avoid a 'clash of civilisations' while remaining fearful of
renewal within the Muslim world. It was a tribute to Washington's
diplomacy that its assault on Afghanistan aroused so little official
censure in the Muslim world, but an indication of the fragility
of this success that no Muslim state was willing to play an active
and public role in the attack. Notwithstanding continuing corrections
and adjustments--dumping the terms 'crusade' and 'infinite justice'
for the campaign against Al Qaeda, strenuously cultivating old
and new Muslim allies--the US failed to extricate itself from
the strategic trap it faces. It prefered to talk of war than
of a police operation. And it was planning a new government in
Afghanistan based on 'moderate' Taliban and Northern warlords
and mercenary tribal elders under the aegis of the former monarch,
Zahir Shah. So far as the wider Islamic world is concerned this
strategy simultaneously offends the Islamicists and those who
yearn for more democracy, autonomy and self-respect. Religious
fanatics and bourgeois or petty-bourgeois democrats are not natural
allies--in Iran they are at loggerheads--but in the territories
where the United States has allied itself with feudal and autocratic
reaction these two currents find a common antagonist. The White
House may genuinely believe that the interests of global capitalism
are best promoted by its pact with the oil dynasties and their
Pakistani and Egyptian hangers-on, but this is not true. The
pact may deliver slightly cheaper oil, and privileges to Western
oil corporations, but it stifles the growth of an autonomous
business culture and circuits of accumulation in the region itself.
The resulting frustrations create conditions which politicise
religious fanaticism, especially in those countries where such
fanaticism is one of the few officially-tolerated species of
public activity.
The US attack on Afghanistan was certainly
anticipated. Just a few days before September 11 Massoud, the
commander of the anti-Taliban forces, was assassinated by agents
of Al Qaeda, posing as journalists. This action was calculated
to both please and strengthen the Taliban, by ridding them of
their most dangerous enemy, and to leave the United States with
less credible local allies. The warlords of the Northern Alliance
are dependent on autocratic governments in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
that are seen as stooges of neighbouring powers. With all its
failings the Northern Alliance is preferable to the Taliban,
but it does not represent a force for democracy and does not
shield the invaders from the charge of being alien to Islam.
Matters will not be improved by giving key positions to 'moderate
Taliban' and royalists. This approach risks the worst of both
world--discouraging those who yearn for a more tolerant social
order, for secular progress and for an Afghan regime not beholden
to foreigners while failing to win over or appease the religious
fanatics, or seriously to erode their appeal.
Washington strives not to inflame Muslim
opinion, or to allow the conflict to be defined as a war of religions.
It hopes that the danger can be avoided by allowing its Muslim
allies to adopt a low profile, or even to stand aside. The UN
may be handed responsibility for occupied areas of Afghanistan
but Iranian and Egyptian proposals that the UN should take charge
of the anti-terrorism campaign were rejected. Given the UN's
long history giving cover to US military campaigns, from Korea
to Kosovo, entrusting it with nominal responsibility post facto
will be of limited value in averting the danger of a 'clash of
civilisations'. The UN could sponsor an accord against terrorism
and the creation of a supranational force to police it. But such
an approach would have little legitimacy if credible governments
from the Muslim world are excluded. An international and supranational
approach would be far more effective longterm at tackling terrorism
than a US-led and defined 'war'.but will not easily be accepted
in Washington since it would challenge imperial ideology and
control. The Bush team see themselves as champions of the American
people and US capitalism but in fact neither require direct US
control of Middle Eastern oil, as we will see below.
The most difficult thing for the strategists
of Empire to perceive, or explain to the American people, is
that the best and perhaps only effective coalition against Al
Qaeda and the Taliban will be one that they do not lead and do
not control. The leaflets dropped on with the food packages carried
a message that this was a contribution from 'The Partnership
of Nations' in English and Pushtu. The use of this hollow rubric--perhaps
sounding like United Nations in translation--testified to a deficit
of legitimacy. The United States has standing against Al Qaeda
because of what its citizens have suffered at its hands. But
nobody really believes that the Taliban ordered the September
11.
While I will focus on Washington's sins
of omission and commission I believe it would be wrong to slight
the ability of the Bush administration to impose its own definitions
on domestic opponents, and on allies and even enemies, abroad.
The US president has sometimes been presented as a figure of
fun but this has not stopped him having the last laugh on those
who ridiculed him. Unlike more brilliant leaders he surrounds
himself with a capable and experienced team, and sometimes heeds
words of caution. The secret of his strength--and his fatal flaw--may
be the instinctive rapport he enjoys with those gripped by US
national messianism, the idea that only the United States can
tackle the really big global threats and that whatever the US
does is ipso facto favourable to freedom. These sentiments are
often accompanied by deprecation of international organisations,
an unwillingness to consider global complexities, or to contemplate
any sacrifice of US sovereignty. The casualties on September
11 were on a terrible scale but our world bristles with these
and greater dangers, notably that of encouraging a 'clash of
civilisations' linked to weapons of mass destruction.
Jonathan Schell has drawn out attention
to what he calls, in a book of that name, The Unfinished Twentieth
Century. Schell argues that with the end of the Cold War
in 1989, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the huge
apparatus of nuclear deterrence became redundant, yet it was
neither scrapped or negotiated away. Russia, China and the other
nuclear powers were not invited to dismantle--or even to drastically
reduce--their nuclear weapons systems. The 1972 treaty against
biological weapons was useless because there was no enforcement
agency nor mandatory inspection. Sixty major overseas US military
bases were maintained in forty countries, backed up by over seven
hundred other military installations. What was true of weapons
systems and overseas bases also applied to alliances. NATO was
not disbanded, nor widened to include Russia. Instead it expanded
eastwards and a type of ghostly and surreptitious Cold War against
unnamed 'global competitors' (actually Russia and China) was
perpetuated.
Also still in place was that palimpsest
of alliances inherited from colonialism and the Cold War, so
that the United States entered the new century encumbered and
compromised by all that was most backward-looking and discredited
in the Islamic world. During the Cold war the military confrontation
was precariously regulated by the 'balance of terror'. Today
not only is this lacking but the 'war against terrorism' will
stoke Muslim resentment in a widening arc of states and could
eventually give Al Qaeda the influence it aims at in a nuclear
state. The dangers of an escalation of terror, and of the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction, are very much increased if hundreds
of millions of people believe themselves to be nursing legitimate
grievances.
The imperial role is justified on the
grounds that the United States has a special destiny as world
leader and champion of freedom. These roles, it is believed,
require Washington to meet the threat of rogue states acquiring
weapons of mass destruction, to pre-empt 'global competitors',
to secure sources of scarce raw materials (especially oil), and
to guarantee the personal security of ordinary Americans. Yet
the truth is that the empire does not secure these goals, and
actually makes 'blowback' more likely, as Chalmers Johnson so
presciently argued. A healthier US polity could dispense with
the cumbersome and expensive apparatus of empire, set the scene
for a broader, more pluralistic global capitalism, and promote
the competence and authority of supranational agencies in the
fields of disarmament, anti-terrorism and peace-keeping. But
the vested interests which stand in the way of these goals are
those of a bloated military-industrial complex and re-charged
presidency.
Chapter
2
The Imperial Presidency and National
Messianism
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