Alliances in a terrorized world

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

It was apparently happenstance: Manila caved in to demands of terrorist kidnappers to behead a civilian worker in Iraq just as a newly released study confirms the southern Philippines has become a 'country of convenience' to groom future terrorists. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, even though just victorious in an election, would not defy popular sentiment to maintain the PhilippinesÕ minimal Iraq commitment [less than 100 military].

The International Crisis Group report reconfirms Jemeeah Islamiah, a Southeast Asian Southeast Asian regional terrorist network, with ties to Al Qaida, has used various Islamic Filipino radical groups to train recruits. The organization pulled off the October 2002 Bali bombing which killed more than 200 people, mostly young Australian tourists, and attacked a hotel in downtown Djakarta. The U.S. holds one of its leaders who was apprehended with Thailand and Malaysian collaboration before he could carry out an elaborate sabotage campaign against U.S. installations in Singapore.

For Manila politicians, this episode is part of the larger issue of negotiating with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in another attempt to solve the drive for autonomy by its southern Moslem minority. Those negotiations have gone on for decades, with Manila having in earlier times even invited Muammar Qadaffi as a mediator [the Libyan dictator before his recent apostasy from state terrorism!].

The U.S. recently has extended military assistance to root out another local terrorist group, Abu Sayyaf, half-bandit, half-jihadist in the extortion business who murdered two American missionaries. The operations were partially successful, but probably drove it and other training camps further into the mountains. Operations were hampered by ManilaÕs laws prohibiting foreign military taking part directly, catering to nationalist and anti-American sentiments.

The Philippines problem, however, is not unique.

All over the globe, the U.S. faces the complications of complex ø often long-simmering ø ethnic and racial encumbrances in its anti-terrorist effort. Just as in guerrilla warfare, the essence of the terrorist strategy and tactics is to exploit local peculiarities. Often these arise out of historic conditions ø often injustices ø with long histories and no ready made solutions.

In Pakistan, the so-called Durand Line which the British drew in 1893 through western Indian Empire passes is now the border with Afghanistan. It was LondonÕs solution after two inconclusive wars to bring Afghanistan to heel. While defensible in 19th century headquarters of the raj in faraway Calcutta, today it cuts through ethnic and tribal cultures in a time of expanding communications and transportation. Its ambiguities are the perfect setting for terroristsÕ sanctuary and, presumably, Osama Ben LadinÕs last redoubt..

In Iraq, itself, the shield which U.S. and British airpower provided for the Kurds against Sadam HusseinÕs privations after 1991, permitted just the stability and progress Washington is now trying to achieve in the rest of Iraq. But any gesture toward Kurdish autonomy ø a natural enough aspiration for a long persecuted people in a hoped-for democratic post-liberation Iraq but with an Arab-majority ø aggravates other problems. Turkish politicians [a critical secular but Moslem American NATO ally in its Greater Middle East Initiative, a search for longer term solutions to problems of poverty and political instability] are frightened. For Ankara has its own sordid history of a suppressed and rebellious Kurdish minority.

ÒTraditionalÓ piracy in the strategic and vulnerable Malacca Strait through which more than half the worldÕs oil flows could turn into terrorist theater -- for example, a suicide-driven supertanker loaded with explosive fuel barreling down on downtown Singapore, or sinking a ship in the narrow channel. The scenarios are not outlandish. Some of the pirates have already boarded merchant ships and practiced steering rather than simply looting them as in the past.

But SingaporeÕs neighbors, Malaysia and Indonesia, resist any further projection of U.S power in the area; for example, fast small patrol craft with Marine or Special Forces contingents. They fear their Moslem critics charging them with selling out their post-colonial sovereignty to infidels.This latest episode in Iraq involving Washington-Manila relations is one more dramatic evidence of the success of the terroristsÕ strategy and tactics. The U.S. will have no option but to try to persuade the Filipinos to continue going after their Moslem rebels.

But the terroristsÕ international organization permits them to exploit differences among the nations of the anti-terrorist alliance, for propaganda if nothing else. The U.S., at the center of that effort and its principle organizer, has to constantly choose between bad and worse strategies and tactics to illicit maximum cooperation. Furthermore, the considerable capabilities of the terrorists seem likely to grow rather than diminish in the short term given their long period of preparation when Washington and the rest of the worldÕs leadership slept. It is going to take extremely sophisticated U.S. strategy and tactics, constantly dodging and weaving [and therefore under constant attack domestically and abroad for being ÒinconsistentÓ] to meet the challenge.