Al-Qa’ida Ten Years after 9/11
If it is true that ‘it’s the results
that matter’ then, on this the tenth anniversary of the 9/11
attacks, the United States has been the biggest loser, regardless
of whether al-Qa’ida implemented them or – as some conspiracy
theorists say – the US authorities knew about the attacks in
advance and sought to use them to serve their interests.
Furthermore, those attacks on New York and Washington, or conquests,
as al-Qa’ida refers to them in their literature, dragged the
United States into two devastating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These
wars greatly damaged the United States' military prestige, drained
it financially, and left more than 5,000 US soldiers dead and 40,000
others wounded. They also ramped up widespread hatred towards the
United States across the world, particularly in Muslim countries.
Some might argue that the Muslim world, too, paid a terrible price
for those attacks. Iraq has been devastated and nearly one million
of its people have been martyred; Muslim Afghanistan has been invaded
and occupied.
Yet it is also true that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had been
part of the US plans years before the 9/11 attacks. In 1998, a group
of Israel's supporters in the United States, led by Professor Bernard
Lewis, along with a number of neo-conservatives, like Richard Pearl,
Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, and others, called for the destruction
of Iraq. They published a major advertisement to that effect in US
papers, on the grounds that they considered Iraq to pose the greatest
danger to Israel’s ability to survive. They re-published that
advertisement and reasserted their stand in later years. It is no
coincidence that all of those men – with the exception of Lewis
- were among the US administration ‘hawks’ who planned
and then carried out the war on Iraq. Lewis was the spiritual father
of these officials, and he went so far as to call for the fragmentation
of Iraq on the grounds that it was an artificial state.
Ten years later, the United States suffered an utter defeat in Iraq,
handing the county over to a sectarian regime that is closely linked
to Iran. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the primary ally
of Bush and Israel, in an article published yesterday to mark this
occasion, described Iran as the greatest danger to the Western world,
and said that if he were in power, he would launch a massive offensive
to destroy it.
The situation in Afghanistan is worse, as two-thirds of that country's
territories are under the control of Taliban, which the United States
ostensibly invaded in 2001 to destroy. Ironically, the US Administration
is unwillingly negotiating with this fundamentalist movement and may
help it return to power in order to facilitate the safe withdrawal
of the US troops from that country.
Prior to the US occupation of Afghanistan, which was in retaliation
for the 9/11 attacks, al-Qa’ida had just one address –
the Tora Bora Mountains. Now, thanks to the influence of Israel and
its loyalists in President Bush's administration, ten years after
the declaration of war on terror, and despite the assassination of
its leader and founder, Osama bin Laden, al-Qa’ida is stronger
than ever. It has branches all over the place: in the Arabian Peninsula,
led by Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the group is threatening the oil-fields,
oil reserves and western oil supply routes in the Gulf region and
in Saudi Arabia. There is another branch in Somalia, which controls
international maritime routes. And there is a branch in the Islamic
Maghreb, a stone’s throw from Europe's southern Mediterranean
coasts. The branch in Iraq is regrouping and reinforcing its ranks
having overcome its differences with the indigenous insurgency. The
mother organization in Afghanistan has not weakened, as US-backed
‘terror experts’ insist, playing the tune of their bosses’
wishful thinking; here it is in a close alliance with the Taliban
which has scored numerous victories in the battlefield.
As a result of the 9/11 attacks and their catastrophic consequences,
the United States has become weaker and more timid, and is now the
world's most heavily indebted nation ($14 trillion). Is it not worth
noting that the United States did not dare intervene militarily in
Libya, opting to leave the mission to France and Britain for fear
of repeating the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan?
Another point on which western commentators are deafeningly silent
is the benefits for al-Qa’ida deriving from the war in Libya.
The military capabilities of its Algeria-based branch in the Maghreb
(AQIM) and smaller affiliates in Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, and
Burkina Faso have been greatly boosted by seizure of weapons, ammunition,
and rockets from the collapsing Libyan regime's arms depots. This
development has sown horror in the hearts of Western officials in
charge of combating terror. We will not be surprised, or rule out
the possibility that the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, who is on
the run, may ally himself with al-Qa’ida or its cells in the
region to terrorize Europe and revenge himself on NATO, which played
a major role in toppling his regime.
The financial crisis battering the Western world is a direct result
of the exaggerated reaction to the 9/11 attacks. It is no coincidence
that the volume of deficit in the Western world's economy, estimated
at approximately $3 trillion, is equal to the volume of the US and
European military expenditure in Iraq and Afghanistan.
NATO's military intervention in Libya must come under the label of
neo-colonialism. In a bid to solve its own fiscal problems it hopes
to commandeer Libya's resources and huge financial assets (160bn dollars);
it is not prompted by a desire to rescue the Libyan people from the
tyrant. After all, both Britain and France cooperated with this tyrant
until a few months before the eruption of the uprising. Genuine documents
revealed that the CIA and the British intelligence service arrested
Libyan oppositionists and handed them over to the Gaddafi for torture
them – among them Abdel Hakim Bel Hajj, the current military
commander of the Military Council of the Libyan rebels in Tripoli
and leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
The huge American and European military machine has only intervened
in two of the Arab world's countries, namely Iraq and Libya, under
the cover of promoting democracy and human rights. It is not a co-incidence
that both are oil-producing countries, which paid - and are still
paying - the bill for this military intervention in oil and from their
financial deposits.
The Western world exploits our, and our leaders', stupidity with carefully-considered
plans; Libya is one example. After deceiving "the king of kings,"
persuading him to destroy his weapons of mass destruction, and exploiting
his son and heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, as a bridge to reach Gaddafi’s
wealth and deposit it in Western banks, they pounced on him like wolves
to tear him apart and hurl him in the open where he deserves to be,
and on the run, looking for a safe haven.
As an organization, al-Qa’ida still exists and will almost certainly
mutate into a more dangerous organization as long as the US and Western
humiliation of Arabs continues. This humiliation takes the form of
the ugliest US bias in favour of Israel, its occupation, aggression,
and desecration of Arab and Islamic sanctities; as well as continuous
plundering of our resources and oil revenues under deceitful guises.
They destroy our countries to be paid to reconstruct them with our
funds and deposits!
It is no coincidence that on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks,
the US Administration has emphasized that it will veto a Palestinian
bill at the UN Security Council calling for recognition of a Palestinian
state on less than 22 per cent of Palestine's historical land.
As long as the United States and the Western world persist in adopting
a position that is humiliating to Arabs and Muslim, and that is biased
in favour of Israel and its wanton aggression, peace will remain an
elusive goal and, most tragically, violence will increase. The new
generation of al-Qa’ida and like-minded global jihadist groups
are much more ruthless and reckless than Osama bin Laden ever was.
Something much more dangerous than al-Qa’ida and Osama bin Laden
is being born.