WASHINGTON: In two years since the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, the United States has rallied one of the largest international coalitions ever to fight the “war against terror”. And yet the threat does not seem to go away.
Almost every day in the last two years, US newspapers and television channels have carried stories reporting attacks carried out by al Qaeda terrorists and their sympathizers.
This year alone, al Qaeda is credited with carrying out deadly bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Morocco, killing scores of people.
And US terrorism experts — both in the government and in private think tanks and security agencies — predict that Al Qaeda and Taliban are regrouping, not just in Afghanistan but also across the Muslim world and in Europe and North America.
Some in the United States dismiss these reports as alarmist and aimed at justifying the huge government spending on the war against terror but most Americans apparently take these reports seriously.
To allay their fears, the Bush administration tries its best to convince the Americans that the entire world is with them in this war.
“We’ve built a coalition against terrorism unlike any other,” said Marc Grossman, undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department. “We have 90 nations that have arrested or detained 2,700 terrorists and their supporters since September 11th; 17 nations contributed nearly 6,000 troops to Operation Enduring Freedom and to the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul; 161 countries have blocked terrorist assets totalling $116 million.”
In Afghanistan, the US administration also has enlisted the Nato’s support to fight resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda sympathizers. It also has got the backing of the United Nations, which has outlawed all terrorist activities by adopting the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.
The European Union pushed its central banks to help identify and block money laundering, and US Customs officers are now routinely working in European ports to monitor shipping containers.
Despite differences between the United States and France and Germany over the war in Iraq, their police, intelligence and judicial services have continued to cooperate in the war against terrorism.
The Russians and Chinese have also been very cooperative, providing intelligence and security information against suspected terrorists.
Even countries like Syria and Libya, still on the US list of terrorism sponsors, have been sharing information — in part because their largely secular regimes have their reasons to fear religious extremists.
These successes inspired President George Bush to claim on May 1 that “the turn of the tide” had come in the “war on terrorism”.
The arrest last September in Pakistan of Ramzi bin Al Shib led to the arrest of Khaled Sheikh Mohammad, Al Qaeda’s logistics chief and the most senior figure yet taken. His courier networks led in turn to Ridwan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, the alleged planner of the Bali bombing.
Despite these successes, US terrorism experts, appearing on various television shows on the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, admit that Al Qaeda is still able to operate across the world.
Experts also acknowledge that the US invasion of Iraq has provided Al Qaeda with a new battleground and a new focus of recruitment. The group is now seeking “martyrs” to help “liberate a Muslim land from Western occupation forces,” as Osama bin Laden said in one of his latest audiotapes.
US experts say that Arab veterans of the Afghan wars — always the hardcore of Al Qaeda — are now flocking to Iraq to join the anti-American resistance. Jerry Bremer, the American proconsul in Baghdad, called Iraq “the new battleground of the war on terrorism.”
The experts also point out that while the “war against terror” helped boost President Bush’s image to new heights, by taking the war to Iraq, “She has come embarrassingly close to international isolation,” as one of them said.
They point out that so far the Bush administration has been unable to prove any link between Al Qaeda and the ousted Iraqi regime of President Saddam Hussein. It also has failed to find weapons of mass destruction, which President Bush said was the main reason for invading Iraq.
The concerns for Al Qaeda also has had an adverse affect on civil liberties in the United States where laws such as the Patriot Act, and the proposed Patriot Act II, continue to shrink the freedom of foreign visitors and legally resident aliens. Such laws also have restricted the freedom of American citizens while giving vast search and arrest powers to law enforcing agencies.
Almost two years have passed since US forces arrested and brought an undisclosed number of Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects from Afghanistan to a US prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They have not yet been formally charged or produced before a court.
US authorities are now enlarging the prison to build new chambers where they intend to hold secret trial for these prisoners, some of whom are as young as 13.
The US coalition against terror is also facing problems at the United Nations in developing a unified plan on addressing terrorism. The special committee tasked to formulate the plan is still unable to agree on a universal definition of terrorism. A group of Muslim states want to exclude activities taken “during an armed conflict, including the situation of foreign occupation.” The issue that they cited was Palestinian resistance to Israel.