16 October 2004
Preventing a new dark age
By DAVID HOWELL
The entire geopolitical system is now enmeshed with Middle East issues. Mideast
stability is the absolute key to peaceful global progress, both economic and
social, as well as to the future of many world leaders and their policies.
Conversely, the continued undermining of
stability throughout the region spells more terrorism, more disruption worldwide
and, certainly, a dramatic reduction in energy security, leading the major
powers to compete with increasing frenzy for oil and gas supplies from elsewhere
as they struggle to reduce Mideast dependence.
All this is immensely dangerous for global harmony and confirms how absolutely
essential it is for all responsible nations to work together and play their full
part in gripping the hydra-headed Mideast problem in all its fast-changing and
baffling complexity.
If there are solutions, where do we start? Obviously the situation in Iraq must
be stabilized, however long it takes. The Coalition forces, now re-labeled the
Multilateral Force in support of the interim Iraqi government, must be
reconciled to a long stay and many challenges. To pull out now would be to
consign Iraq, and all of the Middle East, to unprecedented chaos, civil war and
breakup. Iraq would certainly dissolve and be replaced by fearsome new warring
factions in a vacuum of anarchy that would spread to Saudi Arabia.
And that is just one aspect. If the aim is to establish lasting Mideast
stability and curb worldwide terrorist activity, which threatens every open
society, then the situation must be tackled by the most comprehensive and
globalized approach that the world has ever seen.
I see this approach resting on six different strategies or programs operating in
parallel. The first three are in the context of "hard power" while the second
three involve "soft power" deployment:
* Strategy One: We now require new degrees of intimate international
collaboration between police, intelligence services and security forces
worldwide to contain terrorist activities (including between authorities in the
United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, Egypt, Japan, etc.) to catch and punish
killers and those identified as having been involved in any terrorist outrages.
If any listed, or suspected, terrorist applies for an air ticket on any airline,
anywhere, or even tries to rent a motorcar, that fact must immediately be
conveyed to the police and antiterrorist authorities in the country of
destination.
* Strategy Two: These procedures must be comprehensive to work. There must be no
loophole states and safe havens if governments are to track and anticipate
plots, conspiracies and the next strategic moves by al-Qaeda and other terrorist
organizations. Known leaders must be arrested and charged where possible.
Those states that refuse to comply must be pressured and, if necessary, coerced.
Iraq was -- and indeed remains -- a terrorist-friendly zone. But at least now
its official government is on the right side. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was a
pillar of anti-Americanism and terrorist aggression. There may not have been a
direct link between Hussein and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but Hussein, in
1999, declared open war, to be waged by Arabs and Islamics together, against
Westerners. That above all was the case for knocking down the Hussein pillar.
* Strategy Three: Security and defense forces in all democracies must be
expanded and trained not merely to cope with terrorist emergencies (by then it
is too late) but to deploy around and guard all institutions and public
services.
After the Madrid railway atrocity in March, I was informed that Japan Central
Railway, which had previously operated 90 surveillance cameras at Tokyo Station,
raised this to 500! That is the kind of scale of surveillance and watchfulness
now required.
* Strategy Four: All the above assumes that one cannot negotiate with convinced
murderers and killers. These new so-called apocalyptic terrorists have no goals
except to kill the maximum number of innocent people. Against such psychopaths
only well targeted and deadly force will be effective.
But when it comes to halting the flow of new recruits to terrorism and suicide,
then dialogue begins to play its part. For example, work is vital at all levels,
international and national, to associate with and encourage moderate Islam. It
is the split in Islam itself that will ultimately constrain the extremist
violence.
* Strategy Five: The international community must deal diplomatically,
vigorously and directly with all grievances that fuel (some say "justify")
terrorist activities -- the Palestine/Israel conflict, Chechen autonomy, Iraq
policy etc. -- as well as implement much more effective and relevant strategies
for triggering growth and development in poorer societies (even though the 9/11
operatives were mostly well-off Saudis, and backed by wealthy Pakistani and
Saudi businessmen).
In the Mideast context, we need to learn the point that the great T.E. Lawrence
(Lawrence of Arabia) grasped from the start: that Arabs will reform if you work
with them, arm in arm, not try to lecture them or impose order on them.
* Strategy Six: On the homeland security front, advanced societies' enormous
vulnerabilities to terrorist attack must be reduced substantially. This means
reduced reliance on exposed global systems and networks for energy supply (oil
and liquefied natural gas), information and cyber-systems; much greater domestic
alertness (as in wartime); and more decentralization, miniaturization and backup
systems wherever possible.
The energy issue is central to the need for reduced vulnerability. Far from
being less vulnerable to energy shocks and terrorist assault, the advanced world
today is more vulnerable than ever.
The strategic hope shared by both security experts and environmentalists was
that fossil-fuel dependence, both on the Middle East and in general, would
steadily decline in the next 10 to 20 years. Regretfully, the opposite is
happening: World oil consumption is soaring (now 84 million barrels a day),
driven by China, India and the biggest offender of all, the United States. The
sober predictions are for this figure to rise to 122 million barrels a day by
2020. Consumption figures for coal and natural gas, which is slightly cleaner,
are also soaring. More and more of the oil will come from politically unreliable
sources.
Consequently, we face a frightening prospect of surging world energy demand and
stagnant supply, which inevitably spells higher oil prices for a long while
ahead -- all delivered by a fragile and complex global infrastructure that is
wide open to terrorist disruption.
Much of the debate in America and Britain has been about weapons of mass
destruction. But the grim truth is that current terrorist activity -- from 9/11
and Bali (October 2002) to Madrid, Jakarta and Beslan -- has been conducted
without recourse to WMDs. For their kidnappings, hijackings, beheadings and
suicide bombings in crowded places, all the killers needed were mobile phones,
teletexting, aircraft, strap-on Semtex and, of course, the state of mind that
encourages suicide.
There is no substitute, no magic political alternative, for the hard grind of
detailed cooperation between agencies, armed forces, information and
intelligence systems and operatives. The democracies and nation states must work
intimately and effectively together at every operational level. If we fail to do
so, then we are lost and the hyperterrorists will have won by ushering in a new
dark age.
