May 2, 2012
KIMBERLY DOZIER

A year after the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda is hobbled and hunted, too busy surviving for the moment to carry out another September 11-style attack on US soil.

But the terrorist network dreams still of payback, and US counterterrorist officials warn that, in time, its offshoots may deliver.

A decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that has cost the US about $1.28 trillion and 6,300 U.S. troops’ lives has forced Al Qaeda’s affiliates to regroup, from Yemen to Iraq. Bin Laden’s No 2, Ayman Al Zawahri, is thought to be hiding, out of US reach, in Pakistan’s mountains, just as bin Laden was for so many years.

“It’s wishful thinking to say Al Qaeda is on the brink of defeat,” says Seth Jones, a Rand analyst and adviser to US special operations forces. “They have increased global presence, the number of attacks by affiliates has risen, and in some places like Yemen, they’ve expanded control of territory.”

It’s a complicated, somewhat murky picture for Americans to grasp.

US officials say Bin Laden’s old team is all but dismantled. But they say new branches are hitting Western targets and US allies overseas, and still aspire to match their parent organization’s milestone of September 11, 2001.

The deadliest is in Yemen. “They are continuing to try to again, carry out an attack against US persons inside of Yemen, as well as against the homeland,” White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

“We’re working very closely with our Yemeni partners to track down all these leads,” he said.

Brennan says there’s no sign of an active revenge plot against US targets, but US citizens in Pakistan and beyond are being warned to be vigilant ahead of the May 2 anniversary of the night raid. US helicopters swooped down on Bin Laden’s compound in the Pakistani army town of Abbottabad, killing him, one of his sons, two couriers and their wives.

The last view for Americans of the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks was that of a wizened old man sitting in front of an old television, wrapped in a blanket.

The world may never see photographic proof of his death. US District Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington ruled last week that the Obama administration, under the Freedom of Information Act, would not have to turn over images of Bin Laden during or after the raid.

“Verbal descriptions of the death and burial of Osama Bin Laden will have to suffice,” Boasberg wrote in his ruling on the lawsuit by the public interest group Judicial Watch.

Bin Laden’s killing and Al Qaeda’s stumbling efforts to regroup are now the national security centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

The White House frequently cites the president’s decision to approve the raid, with only a 50-50 chance that Bin Laden was even at the compound. Obama could have gone down in history as the man who put the Navy SEALs and the relationship with Pakistan in jeopardy, while failing to catch the Al Qaeda leader.

“Al Qaeda was and is our No 1 enemy,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said last week. “So it’s a part of his foreign policy record, obviously, but it’s also part of a very serious endeavor to keep our country safe.”

How safe remains in question.

US officials say Al Qaeda is less able to carry out a complex attack like September 11 and they rule out Al Qaeda’s ability to attack with weapons of mass destruction in the coming year. These officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they say publicly identifying themselves could make them a target of the terrorist group.

US counterterrorist forces have killed roughly half of Al Qaeda’s top 20 leaders since the raid. That includes US-born cleric Anwar Al Awlaki, killed by a drone in Yemen last September, less than six months after Bin Laden’s death.

Only a few of the original Al Qaeda team remain, and most of the new names on the US target lists are relative unknowns, officials say.

“The last terror attack (in the West) was seven years ago in London and they haven’t had any major attacks in the US” says Peter Bergen, an Al Qaeda expert who once met Bin Laden. “They are recruiting no-hopers and dead-enders.”

Yet Zawahri is still out there. Though constantly hunted, he has managed to release 13 audio and video messages to followers since Bin Laden’s death, a near record-rate of release according to the IntelCenter, a private intelligence firm. He has urged followers to seize on the unrest left by the Arab Spring to build organisations and influence in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere, and back rebels in Syria — a call that US intelligence officials say is being heeded.

US attempts to deliver a “knockout punch” to Zawahri and his followers in Pakistan have been hamstrung by a breakdown in relations with Pakistan’s government over the Bin Laden raid.

“Our efforts are focused on one small kill box and, we’ve hit them hard, but they still maintain a vital network throughout Pakistan” says Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal, which tracks US counterterrorism efforts worldwide.

Al Qaeda also takes shelter in Pakistan’s urban areas, as shown by the Bin Laden raid, and the CIA’s efforts to search those areas is often blocked by the Pakistani intelligence service.

By the numbers, Al Qaeda’s greatest presence is still greatest in Iraq, where intelligence officials estimate up to a 1,000 fighters have refocused their campaign from striking now-absent US troops to hitting the country’s government.

Yemen’s Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is becoming a major draw for foreign fighters as it carves out a stronghold in the south of the country, easily defeating Yemeni forces preoccupied battling tribal and political unrest. The White House recently agreed to expanded drone strikes to give the CIA and the military greater leeway to target militant leaders.

This Al Qaeda group has been a major threat since 2009, when one of its adherents tried to bring down a jetliner over Detroit.

Al Qaeda affiliates such as Al Shabab in Somalia are struggling to carry out attacks in the face of a stepped up CIA-US military campaign, and a loss of popular support after blocking UN food aid to some four million starving Somalis, officials say.

Many US officials cite the Yemen model as the way ahead: a small network of US intelligence and military forces working with local forces to selectively target militants.

“The key challenge will be balancing aggressive counterterrorism operations with the risk of exacerbating the anti-Western global agenda” of Al Qaeda and its affiliates, says Robert Cardillo, a senior official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In other words, adds Jones: “It is a war in which the side that kills the most civilians loses.”
Source: Khaleej Times

May 2, 2012
Rafia Zakaria

THE compound has been demolished and the wives shipped off to Saudi Arabia. In the one year since Osama bin Laden’s death the physical evidence of his presence, his home and household have all but been eliminated from Pakistani soil.

If these demolitions and departures were indicators of the end of an era, the dislocation of terror and its tentacles in Pakistani soil then Pakistanis could all have heaved a collective sigh of relief on this day and marked it as the moment when they kissed terror and its bloody legacy good bye.

As history or fate would have it, such sentimental scenes are not destined for Pakistan. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the country saw 476 major incidents of terrorism (major classified as involving three or more deaths) in 2011.

The worst of them came not before but after the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, when 90 people, paramilitary and civilians were killed as two suicide bombers attacked an FC training centre in Charsadda.

The attacks have continued unabated since, the period from January until April of this year 2012 already having witnessed 201 bomb blasts with hundreds killed and injured. The year and a half period from 2011 to the middle of 2012, has seen more people die of terrorist attacks in Pakistan than Americans in the whole decade since 9/11.

Pakistan’s casualties from terror are not simply those who have died in the attacks themselves. Every dying man and woman to fall in the unfortunate path of the suicide bomber or automated blast has left behind him or her an unseen mourning horde of those that must live on, lives forever interrupted, inexplicably and unjustly.

The conflict between security forces and terrorists has wreaked its own havoc in the enactment of Pakistan’s terror tragedy. A few weeks ago, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, announced that 208,000 internally displaced people are now living in the Jalozai camp in Nowshera since January of this year, a number said to represent only 15 per cent of the actual people displaced from their homes.

Many of these wandering victims of terror, homeless and hungry, are just as hapless as the dead According to Oxfam, nearly half a million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, with a recent influx of 63,000 families putting tremendous stress on the resources available. Nearly 80 per cent of the displaced families have no access to healthcare or medicines.

When the death of Osama bin Laden was announced a year ago today, those assessing the success or defeat of the war on terror from the safe distance of faraway lands rejoiced and believed. A poll conducted in Pakistan days after found Pakistanis unsure.

Conducted by YouGov, in collaboration with Polis at Cambridge University, the poll found that 66 per cent of educated Pakistanis did not believe that Osama Bin Laden was killed in the attack.

Another poll, conducted by Gallup International also conducted in the immediate aftermath of the raid, found that only 25 per cent of Pakistanis actually believed that the person attacked in Abbottabad that day was Osama bin Laden.

When asked whether terrorism would increase, decrease or remain unchanged, nearly three-quarters of Pakistanis believed that it would increase or at best remain unchanged.

As the ensuing year’s numbers have shown, they were right. Counting casualties, direct and indirect, dead or almost dead, maimed by bombs or bullets delivers a prognosis that shows terror living well and claiming much, hiding in cities and towns and felling young and old with hate or hunger. But the doubt over Osama bin Laden’s death amid the continuation of the very disease it was supposed to cure points to another casualty.

The first decade of the war on terror, punctuated by today’s anniversary of the death of the mastermind most visibly associated with it, has produced not only casualties of flesh and blood but also of truth and belief.

Pakistanis did not doubt Osama bin Laden’s death because the crystal balls or nocturnal visions indicated no cessation in bombings and killings, or because of secretly nursed sympathies that venerated a mass murderer, or any of the other explanations bandied about by those who would magnify the death of the man into an epic victory.

Pakistanis did not believe in the death of Osama bin Laden, because the most tragic, heartrending and invisible casualty of terror in Pakistan has been the death of truth itself.

With the proliferation of terror has come the elevation of secrecy, a new creed practised by governments and intelligence agencies, foreign governments and spymasters, extremist outfits that change names with the seasons and all those who shelter them. This intricate web of the unknown that weaves through every event and breathes souls into the corpses of doubt has meant the end of fact in Pakistan. The bomb blast at a train station, the murder of a journalist, the verdict of a court nothing can be solved or explained or predicted because nothing can be believed.

There are many scars inflicted on the suffering by conflict, this one cast on one and all bleeds everyday and is never bandaged, draining drop by drop the spirit that sustains a nation.

Bleeding internally and externally, one year after Bin Laden’s death, Pakistan is not misunderstood and the truth more so. As the reason for deaths, the causes of catastrophes, the elusiveness of justice or accountability present day-after-day new tableaus of anarchy, it seems laughable and even cruel to consider that many in the world thought and still think that the death of a single evil man could mean much or anything when the deaths of so many innocent others have meant absolutely nothing.

The writer is an attorney teaching political philosophy and constitutional law.

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
-Dawn

May 3, 2012 by admin786| Leave a comment
Jawed Naqvi

I MUST confess I was among the feckless journalists that wouldn’t believe for days after the event a year ago that Osama bin Laden was killed or could be killed without the help of Pakistani intelligence.

Many analysts staked their reputation over the inevitability of Pakistani collusion in Osama’s death. The true story remains mired in claims and counter-claims.

So much so that President Obama was ticked off by officials of the US Navy SEALs for claiming undue credit. There was a story this week about a vital tip-off the Americans got from Pakistani intelligence on Osama’s secret courier whose movements were tracked and eventually led to the Al Qaeda chief’s lair near a Pakistani army cantonment. The debate continues, drawing new battle lines, killing old alliances, building new ones.

It was such an incredibly daring operation fraught with risks. After all, in 1980 another Democratic president lost a second bid for the Oval Office after a similarly daring operation went wrong. The attempt to rescue American hostages from their captors in Tehran misfired in a stormy Iranian desert.

Pictures of President Obama and his team watching the real-time execution of Osama bin Laden added to the pervasive sense of achievement that followed and lingered on for weeks, months, across the oceans.

And yet, in political cat and mouse, rarely does the assassination of an adversary lead to an anticipated dénouement. The meticulously planned elimination of Osama in his lair last May appears today at best to have been a vendetta killing of a macabre villain. By all accounts, the threat of religious terrorism associated with the 9/11 mastermind remains very much alive and ready to mutate into more ominous forms of horror.

According to a recent CNN news alert, a 22-year-old Austrian named Maqsood Lodin could represent new forms religious terror may acquire. He has been questioned by police in Berlin since May last year after he had returned from Pakistan. Lodin’s interrogators were surprised to find that hidden in his underpants were a digital storage device and memory cards. Buried inside them was a pornographic video and a file marked ‘Sexy Tanja’.

After sustained efforts to crack a password and software to make the file nearly invisible, German investigators discovered encoded inside the video a treasure trove of intelligence — scores of Al Qaeda documents that included clues about plots and a road map for future operations.

These plots, according to CNN, include the idea of seizing cruise ships and carrying out attacks in Europe similar to the gun attacks by Pakistani militants on Mumbai in November 2008.

US intelligence sources told CNN that the documents uncovered are “pure gold”; one source says that they are the most important haul of Al Qaeda materials in the last year, besides those found when US Navy SEALs raided Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.

One Al Qaeda document makes it clear that the group is aware it is being followed. “It specifically says that western intelligence agencies have become very good at spoiling attacks, that they have to come up with new ways and better plotting.”

While the document ‘Future Works’ does not include dates or places, nor specific plans, it appears to be a brainstorming exercise to seize the initiative and again install Al Qaeda on front pages around the world. The question remains: is the world really much safer after Osama bin Laden.

As assassinations go, Osama’s killing seems almost passé in its import against some other individual fatalities, including the less immaculately planned and nearly spontaneous assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in the Balkans in 1914.

Those two bullets fired on a Sarajevo street on a balmy June morning in 1914 set in motion a series of events that shaped the world we live in. The First World War, the Second World War, the Cold War and its conclusion all trace their origins to the gunshots that interrupted that summer day.

By contrast, Osama’s killing will at best find an echo in the American presidential race in November this year. But even President Obama who ordered the assault will not be quite so sure that the proverbial trophy of the victim’s head was good enough to see him home and dry against the gathering Republican challenge. Who knows, but had the Al Qaeda chief been nabbed alive the secular world and probably President Obama himself would have benefited more.

The cynical cost-benefit factor in the bizarre terror hunt has all the potential to make ordinary people wary of the shifting motives behind the global dragnet. What would make any serious observer suspicious about celebrating the anniversary of Osama’s death as some kind of a game-changer in the big fight is the palpable shift in focus about the quarry. From Al Qaeda and groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba it spawned, suddenly out of the blue, a new battle cry has brought Iran in the crosshairs of global
terror hunt.

As an Indian journalist I have watched together with other angry colleagues how a fellow journalist has been made a pawn in the new chess game between Iran and its detractors, with India playing a cowardly facilitator, in a post-Osama terror hunt.

An alleged bomb attack on an Israeli diplomat’s car in Delhi was without a moment’s pause declared to be the handiwork of Iran.
Until this incident, all the alleged villains were Sunni groups variously based in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Suddenly, Iran, which itself was and reportedly still is a target of Al Qaeda’s Pakistan-based allies, has become the terrorist-in-chief.

I wonder how Syed Mohammed Kazmi, now lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail for the alleged attack on the Israeli car, a charge he has vociferously denied, will observe the anniversary celebrating Osama bin Laden’s death. As far as his friends are concerned, and they are highly respected Indian journalists, Kazmi was by far the best informed correspondent who had enviable contacts in nearly all the countries of the Middle East. He challenged the West in Syria, in Iraq and on Iran.

The terror factory works both ways. It spawns a culture of indiscriminate mass murderers. It also enables the most applauded democracies to turn slowly, unobtrusively, into police states.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com
-Dawn

S Iftikhar Murshed
Sunday, May 06, 2012

Last Wednesday marked the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Within three days of his death the myth that he commanded the absolute loyalty of all Al-Qaeda factions began to unravel. Reports sourced to Al-Qaeda insiders surfaced in the Arab print media that it was the outfit’s Egyptian component led by Ayman Al-Zawahiri that had tipped off American intelligence through a Pakistani intermediary about Bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad.

At first glance this seems like an outlandish conspiracy theory, but Al-Zawahiri’s murky past is replete with instances of treachery and outright betrayal of his close associates. In 1981 he disclosed the whereabouts of Essam Al-Qamari, a co-conspirator in the assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat, which resulted in Al-Qamari’s execution; in 1989 he was allegedly involved in the killing of Abdullah Azzam, the ideological founder of Al-Qaeda.

Against this background, reports have also recently emerged that information was indirectly divulged to US intelligence by Al-Zawahiri loyalists about the precise location of several non-Egyptian Al-Qaeda commanders. These included Ilyas Kashmiri (Pakistan) who was killed in a drone strike on June 4 last year, Atiyah Abdul Rahman (Libya) was similarly eliminated on August 22, Badar Mansoor (Pakistan) was successfully targeted on February 9 this year, and several others.

Al-Zawahiri began his jihadist enterprise as a stalwart committed to the reversal of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, but by the mid-2000s he had become an agent of Russian intelligence. This was disclosed in July 2005 in an interview to the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita by Alexander Litvinenko, a senior official of the Soviet KGB and subsequently its Russian successor, the Federal Security Services (FSB). Litvinenko, who was killed on November 23, 2006, disclosed that Al-Zawahiri was an “old agent of the FSB” who had been trained for six months by Russian intelligence in Dagestan in 1997. This was later confirmed by the former KGB agent Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy, as well as by FSB spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko.

The Doha-based daily Al-Watan was told by disgruntled Al-Qaeda leaders last May that “the Egyptians wanted to control the organisation since its inception, but found their biggest opportunity after Osama bin Laden’s illness in mid-2004.” It was at this point in time that Al-Zawahiri prevailed upon Bin Laden to relocate to Abbottabad and then took effective command of Al-Qaeda. This was also corroborated by the US State Department which disclosed on April 30, 2009, that Al-Zawahiri had emerged as Al-Qaeda’s operational and strategic commander, whereas Osama bin Laden had become only the ideological figurehead of the organisation.

The Al-Qaeda leader’s health had actually deteriorated sharply towards the end of the 1990s. This was also conveyed to me by Mullah Omar during several of our meetings in Kandahar in 1998 and 1999. On one occasion he said “Osama will not live much longer. The sooner he dies the better for Afghanistan.”

Bin Laden was acutely aware that he was living on borrowed time and this explains his hurry to pull off 9/11. The planning for this event had begun in early 2000. This is evident from a letter of September 10, 2010, from Al-Libi Noman Benotman, a former Bin Laden associate and leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, to the Al-Qaeda chief. Al-Libi recalled that Bin Laden had invited him for breakfast at his “simple mud house in Kandahar in the summer of 2000,” where Al-Zawahiri was also present.

In the meeting Al-Libi reminded Bin Laden that on several occasions Mullah Omar had asked him “to stop provoking and inviting American attacks on his country.” This was also the advice of senior Al-Qaeda ideologue and religious thinker Sheikh Abu Hafs Al-Mauritani (real name Mafouz Ould Al-Walid), who had also categorically stated that by defying Mullah Omar, Al-Qaeda “was making a mockery of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” To this Bin Laden replied that one more operation was underway and he could not stop it.

Even Abu Muhammad Al-Zayyat, the head of Al-Qaeda’s military committee, had vehemently objected to Bin Laden’s “final” operation as that was “illegitimate without Mullah Omar’s permission.” But the Al-Qaeda chief had made up his mind and went ahead with the fateful 9/11 attacks. This brought ruin to Afghanistan and eventually resulted in his own inglorious death.

Referring to 9/11, Al-Libi told Bin Laden: “Your actions have harmed millions of innocent Muslims and non-Muslims alike. How is this Islam or jihad? For how much longer will Al-Qaeda continue to bring shame on Islam? ...Muslims across the world have rejected your calls for wrongful jihad and the establishment of your so-called ‘Islamic state’...Even the Palestinians consider your ‘help’ to have had negative repercussions on their cause.”

Similar opinions have been expressed by Muslim scholars and leaders worldwide, but some of the influential politicians of Pakistan, a breed of middle-aged mediocrities, think differently. A few days after the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Jamaat-e-Islami organised a massive rally in Lahore in which he was eulogized as a “martyr of Islam.” Representatives of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Nawaz Sharif’s faction of the Muslim League and the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba were prominent among the participants. Speaker after speaker extolled the valour of the slain terrorist and severely reprimanded the government for the US commando raid that killed their hero.

This was not an isolated event as several similar demonstrations have been held. The most recent being the March 18 public meeting in Chakwal during which Jamaat-e-Islami chief Syed Munawer Hassan proclaimed Bin Laden a “great martyr” and President Asif Ali Zardari the “biggest traitor.” The Al-Qaeda leader, he said, had been “martyred” for standing up to that “great Satan,” the United States.

Pakistan thus has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world where politicians, not only from the religious right but also from the mainstream political parties, have taken out processions and held rallies commemorating the arch terrorist of our times as a martyr for the cause of Islam. It makes little difference to them that an estimated 35,000 civilians have been killed in terrorist acts perpetrated by extremist groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda.

Shortly before his death, Bin Laden had also worked out a blueprint for direct Al-Qaeda attacks against Pakistan. This was apparent from the evidence gathered by the Americans from Osama’s Abbottabad compound, which they shared with their Pakistani counterparts during talks in Islamabad last week.

Al-Qaeda was formally launched in Peshawar on August 11, 1988, and in the near quarter century since then, it was dominated by Osama bin Laden. Researchers have described five distinct phases in its development: (i) the beginning in the late 1980s, (ii) the “wilderness” period from 1990-1996, (iii) the “heyday” period 1996-2001, the network period of 2001-2005, and (v) a period of fragmentation from 2005 to today.

But what the scholars have not said is that by 2005, Al-Qaeda had deviated from its original objectives and had started killing Muslims, as was apparent from the assassination attempt on then-president Hosni Mubarak and the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. By 2006 it had degenerated into a sectarian outfit with the killing of Shias in Iraq. Muslims have been the main victims of Al-Qaeda’s jihad.

It is said that “the evil that men do lives after them,” and so it is with Osama bin Laden. He will always be remembered as the arch terrorist of his times. The influential Saudi cleric, Sheikh Salman Al-Ouda, said it all when he asked Bin Laden: “How many innocent people, children, elderly people, and women have been killed...in the name of Al-Qaeda? Will you be happy to meet God Almighty carrying the burden of these hundreds of thousands or millions of victims on your back?”

The writer is the publisher of Criterion quarterly. Email: iftimurshed @gmail.com

May 7, 2012
Yasser Latif Hamdani

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan made Ahmedis non-Muslims for the purposes of the law and constitution. Exclusivist and arguably ultra vires the scope of parliamentary power as it was, it did not impose any restrictions on the freedom of religion of Ahmedis, including their right to call themselves Muslims. To do so would have been a negation of Article 20 of the Constitution, which promises every citizen freedom to profess and propagate his religion.

Then in 1984 came Ordinance XX, which criminalised the very freedom the constitution bequeathed on Ahmedis as citizens of this country. Hitting at the root of the Ahmedis’ faith, the Ordinance took away the right to say salaam or even recite the Holy Quran. Ironically, Christian painters were given the task of whiting out Quranic verses on Ahmedi graves. It was forbidden for Ahmedis to call their places of worship mosques. They were forbidden to make any structures that remotely resembled a mosque. What, one wonders, does a mosque look like is anybody’s guess. Does the Shah Faisal Mosque in Islamabad look like a mosque? How about Ranjit Singh’s Marri? Does it not look like a mosque? In any event, some vague idea of what a mosque looks like was forbidden to Ahmedis.

Last Thursday, in Lahore, the Misri Shah police scratched out Quranic verses from an Ahmedi place of worship and destroyed parts of it to make it look less like a mosque. It reminded me of another incident not long ago in Switzerland where a ban on minarets for mosques was proposed. Ironically, that incident which had the entire Islamic world up in arms against the Swiss government pertained to an Ahmedi place of worship. Here Pakistan follows that fine Swiss tradition of forbidding religious freedom to a certain community and with a vengeance.

Complainants from as far as 15 kilometers away had become incensed at this small place of worship, which was suddenly threatening the spiritual well being and religious freedom of the good Muslims of Sultanpura and Misri Shah area.

The problem with Muslims in general is that they want themselves to be held to a different standard than that to which they hold others. In the west in general, Muslims seem to be perpetually outraged against ‘intolerant majorities’ for the slightest of slights. Goal posts change once it is a Muslim majority country. The human rights that Muslims assert in the west are almost always deemed as irrelevant to Muslim countries. There is no Muslim country in the world without a harrowing tale of minority persecution. From Coptic Christians in Egypt to Hindus in Pakistan and from the Druze to Ahmedis, almost every Muslim country has a minority or two that has been forcibly oppressed and targeted by a majority that is incapable of accepting diversity, not just vis-à-vis non-Muslims but also within Islam. Bahais and Sunnis face the wrath of the majority in Iran. In Syria, we have Alawites threatened and isolated. In Saudi Arabia, all non-Muslim modes of worship are banned and for expatriates living in Saudi Arabia, being a Shia may lead to deportation (though Saudi Shias are somewhat tolerated). The situation in Pakistan was considerably better until 1984 but since then, not just Ahmedis but Christians and Hindus have also faced systematic persecution. It is not enough to claim that Islam provides the most rights for non-Muslims; there should be some practical example of these rights. Going by what we have in the world today, that example seems to elude us.

At a time when the world was in darkness, Islam gave unprecedented religious freedom to non-Muslims. The Meesaq-e-Medina is evidence enough — Jews and others were declared one Ummat, one community, with the Muslims of Medina. That pact was perhaps the first genuinely pluralistic compact between a diverse people. Amongst the later Caliphs, Mamun-ur-Rasheed’s rule stands out for its acceptance of religious diversity and personal freedom. That his rule corresponded with the zenith of Islamic civilisation is no accident. The Ottoman Empire, in its heyday, was a prime example of this. Sultan Mehmet Fateh — the great conqueror of Constantinople — and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent were both known for their enlightened and tolerant religious policy towards the non-Muslims in their realm. Far from theocratic Caliphs, these masters of realpolitik realised the importance of keeping their non-Muslim subjects happy. Fateh even assumed, for a time, the title of the head of the Orthodox Christian Church and its protector. Much like Akbar the Great, the Mughal Emperor, Mehmet Fateh and Suleiman the Magnificent refused to give in to the whims of the Muslim clergy. Their courts were models of pluralism and heterodox ideas, which is why Jews and Christians, who together outnumbered Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, remained loyal subjects of the Empire. Even Aurangzeb — who was the most puritan and fundamentalist of the Mughal emperors — had to adopt a measure of religious tolerance and pluralism towards the Hindus of his realm though it was not nearly enough in the end.

None of these examples matter though. The truth is that lack of tolerance, a skewed educational system with misplaced priorities and outright bigotry — taught from the pulpit — has so fantastically distorted our worldview that one wonders how we will dig ourselves out of this hole. In terms of our treatment of minorities, our utter disregard for diversity and our zero-tolerance for dissent has begun to fracture our society in ways that we have yet to comprehend fully. How long will we allow this country of ours to remain on the wrong side of history and known for a land of narrow-minded bigots who are incapable of even accommodating a tiny minority?

The writer is a practising lawyer. He blogs at http://globallegalorum.blogspot and his twitter handle is therealylh

May 7, 2012
By Doyle McManus

Americans are far enough away from it now that they can probably all agree: It was a mistake for former president George W. Bush to land on that aircraft carrier in a flight suit to proclaim “Mission Accomplished”. And not just because the war in Iraq was far from over at that point. Every president crows about his successes in war — assuming he has anything to crow about. But he should try to seem modest and statesmanlike while doing so.

President Barack Obama should have reminded himself of that lesson last week as he prepared to fly to Afghanistan to observe the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death. The president didn’t actually use the words “mission accomplished,” but he came pretty close.

Obama and his campaign have managed to turn the anniversary of Bin Laden’s death into a weeklong celebration of the president-as-tough-guy. And they’re celebrating in a distinctly partisan way, suggesting that Mitt Romney would not have made the same decision. The impulse is understandable. Ever since Obama took office, the GOP has accused him of being weak.

Romney and other Republicans have painted him as a peacenik, as soft on defence, as a leader who makes preemptive concessions to tougher-minded adversaries. And these portrayals have persisted despite Obama’s refusal to play the part. Not only did he order the death of Bin Laden, he also approved relentless campaigns of drone strikes against suspected terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen and tripled the number of US troops in Afghanistan. Still, Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden would have done better not to turn the anniversary of Bin Laden’s death into an attack on Romney. It wasn’t presidential, and it wasn’t even necessary.

Troop withdrawal

The president deserved credit for a gutsy decision, but by the time he got to Kabul, his campaign had turned it into another cable television food-fight. And that micro-debate overshadowed a far more important foreign policy (and campaign) message of Obama’s trip to Kabul: The president is keeping his promise to wind down the unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The tide has turned,” Obama said in Kabul.

“The goal that I set — to defeat Al Qaida and deny it a chance to rebuild — is within reach.” And so, he promised, thousands of troops will come home from Afghanistan this summer and fall — a good-news story that will recur long after the anniversary of Bin Laden’s death has faded.

His success in the fight against Al Qaida even emboldened him to try out a metaphor that hasn’t been heard in decades: It’s morning in America. After “a decade under the dark cloud of war … we can see the light of a new day on the horizon,” he said. “As we emerge from a decade of conflict abroad and economic crisis at home, it is time to renew America — an America … where sunlight glistens off soaring new towers in downtown Manhattan.”

To a remarkable degree, Obama has won the debate on Afghanistan. There are still Republican critics, led by Senator John S. McCain of Arizona, who say the troop withdrawals are too fast and warn that the Taliban is simply waiting us out. Their position is reasonable and defensible, but it collides with a public that is sick and tired of the war and its costs.

An ABC News-Washington Post poll this month found that 66 per cent of adults say the war has not been worth fighting — and that included 55 per cent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Indeed, Afghanistan was one issue you didn’t hear Romney talk about last week, perhaps because his positions aren’t likely to win many votes beyond his existing base of national security conservatives.

Romney has called for delaying troop withdrawals until at least the end of the year and has said he would stay in Afghanistan as long as it took to “defeat the Taliban.” Moreover, Romney has denounced Obama for seeking negotiations with the insurgents, even though the Afghan government (and McCain, for that matter) supports the talks as a way to bring the war to an end. It’s no wonder the Romney camp was bent out of shape last week.

Not only did Obama challenge his opponent’s manliness; he also kept the nation focused on Afghanistan rather than on the sorry state of the economy, where Romney stands a better chance of scoring points. Obama has every right to point out the progress he’s made in the fight against Al Qaida and the promises he’s kept in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And he’s got every right to challenge Romney for apparent inconsistencies. But that’s what campaign debates are for. When the president wants to commemorate an act of military valour, he should keep politics out of the mix.
Source: Gulf News

May 8, 2012
By Khawaja Khalid Farooq

AFTER 9/11, Pakistan has been beset by the twin menace of radicalisation and terrorism.

A national policy to deal with the menace of terrorism is a dire necessity, something which is one of the mandated tasks of the nascent National Counter Terrorism Authority of Pakistan (Nacta).

A national counterterrorism strategy has to be drafted and shared with the public, with civil society taking an active part in the deliberations.

This comprehensive strategy should not just have law-enforcement agencies and the military, but should also involve others, for example educationists, who could be required to evaluate outmoded curricula and replace them with more tolerant non-sectarian versions.

Scientists can be involved to jam illegal FM transmissions; the media can generate public-service messages and programmes promoting tolerance. The strategy should remain within the ambit of the rule of law, or it has the potential to become a monster almost as big as the insurgents.

The rule of law needs representative governance. With the arrival of civilian government representing this in 2008, the situation has gradually moved towards a national consensus against terrorism. Democracy must be nurtured in Pakistan, as this is the only way forward for nations to put their affairs in order.

Threat priorities need to be established for the future of the war on terror not only in the Pakistani but in the global context as well. One solution has been the establishment of a counterterrorism environment created by politicians through legislation, budgets and policy decisions.

Legislation will be a part of the directing tangential forces of counterterrorism. In Pakistan, this legislation resonates in the anti-terrorist acts passed by parliament, which need to be constantly reassessed with the changing dynamics of the situation on the ground.

The inherent global challenge would be balancing the rights of citizens and fundamental constitutional guarantees against the increasing threat from terrorism.

This is the delicate balancing act that counterterrorism in the future will continue to face, especially for the security agencies directly involved in these operations, and which perhaps affects the police the most.

Huge challenges for counterterrorism in the future will include coordination which seems to be exponentially increasing.

Future efforts in counterterrorism will require complex investigations involving multiple countries, a variety of types of communication and numerous sources of intelligence. Collectively, there will be an ever-evolving need for more sophisticated forms of counterterrorism and greater resources.

Long-term polices resembling the Blair government‘s CONTEST strategy in the UK need to be in place. The four areas identified as prevention, pursuit, protection and preparedness gain another dimension in the Pakistani context — that of containment, since we have been beset by an insurgency in our northern areas.

This has been reinvented according to our own situation under the government’s policy of dialogue, deterrence and development as the main area of thrust in Pakistan.

The pursuit of improved intelligence, the disruption of terrorist activity and better coordination with international forces fighting terrorism will require improved cooperation. Protection of homeland security installations will require improved domestic security of ports and public transportation systems.

Preparing for the threat of confrontation will require an ever-increasing readiness to respond to terrorist attacks.

The complete elimination of terrorism may not be possible, but adequate containment is the path to be followed. A sincere effort must be made to study individuals prone to radicalisation and who are thus potential recruits for terrorist groups.

Rather than just firefighting, we need to find out the causes: why is there terrorism, why are people becoming radicalised, how are they radicalised? Only then can we deal with these issues.

The future of counterterrorism will also be shaped to a certain extent by the relationships among the various organisations involved in the war against terrorism, which of course stands true for Nacta as well.

While the new threats resulted in the grant of emergency powers to governments to get more powers and additional resources, sometimes the evolution of coordination has been too reactive, short-term and politicised.

This has occasionally caused slow governmental responses to increase resources going into counterterrorism. Police forces are critical in the counterterrorism future, due to their presence on the ground and their ability to carry out arrests.

The key to long-term containment of terrorism, beyond tactical policing and security measures designed to detect and defeat zealots, is to reduce the supply of terrorists. It must be recognised that terrorism requires a small core of radicalised individuals bent on carrying out acts of violence.

What government policy must ensure is that these individuals are kept marginalised within their own communities. They must not be allowed to lead others along the path of violence. If they are isolated then they can be contained, either by the state or by their own communities. Without a support network, they pose a much smaller threat.

Summing up, successful counterterrorism in the future of a democratic society requires trust and confidence in the efficacy of the security forces because public cooperation is essential.

This can only be done after capturing the so-called hearts and minds of the citizens, particularly in those communities where terrorists are to be found, confronted and contained.

This winning of hearts and minds is what constitutes the core of counterterrorism in the future, not just in Pakistan but across the globe as well, and will continue to do so for times to come.

We have the resolve to fight terrorism, but not the entire panoply of resources needed.

Pakistan is a resilient nation, and will overcome these problems eventually. However, the road ahead needs to be paved with the soundest of policies bolstered by the international community in order to bridge the resource gap failing which, one would expect to see militancy problems continuing in the country.

The writer is head of the National Counter Terrorism Authority, Pakistan, and a former inspector-general of police.
-Dawn

May 8, 2012
Areeba Malik

A reporter asked President George W Bush six days after the 9/11 attacks: “Do you want Bin Laden dead?” “There’s an old poster out West, as I recall, that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive,’ “ the president answered.

Nearly a decade later, one of the most arduous manhunts in human history lead to an Osama bin Laden who was alive and well but was subsequently killed at his safe house in Abbottabad by elite American forces. The day was May 2, 2011.

One year after Bin Laden’s death, what lessons has Pakistan learnt? Does the network that the world’s most wanted terrorist commanded, the deadly Al-Qaeda, lie in ruins or is it adapting to the lack of a unifying force and recalibrating its methods and ideology?

Many in the West are making the argument that were Bin Laden alive today, he would find the world radically changed. No one can deny that the Al-Qaeda stands considerably weakened. The Arab Spring uprisings have eaten away at one of Al-Qaeda’s main ideological justifications – that dictatorships in the Muslim world could not be peacefully overthrown and the US had to be attacked as their chief sponsor.

Islamist radicals are now part of emerging governments in Egypt and Tunisia, pledging collaboration with US officials, while Islamic militants in eastern Libya, once a recruiting ground for Al-Qaeda suicide bombers going to Iraq, were last year closely cooperating with Nato to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi.

And finally, the US administration is now ready and willing to engage with militants of all shades who renounce violence and terrorism. It’s a far shot from the world Bin Laden dreamed of fashioning and ruling.

But dangers remain. America’s on-going battle against terror still requires that critical questions about the progress of the war be asked, especially concerning whether the current strategy is working.

No one can deny that the US has a tendency to embark on imperialistic escapades that land it in all sorts of troubles and from which it seems to learn few lessons. We know that on 9/11, Al-Qaeda’s goal was to draw the US into a protracted conflict and “bleed” and “bankrupt” the country – Bin Laden’s own words – and that is exactly what it did: by pitting the US against the larger Islamist world. When Bush invaded Iraq, as so many commentators wrote then, Bin Laden’s plans were realised.

But President Obama seems to be working on a reorientation of strategy and has tried to get his country out of the permanent war his predecessor plunged it in by acknowledging there really is only one Islamist group that attacked the United States directly: Al-Qaeda.

The rest, the US is willing to negotiate with now, as part of the broader Afghan peace process and to extricate itself from a conflict that seems to have no end but which it is desperate to conclude.

As for Pakistan, one year after Bin Laden’s demise, Islamabad has singularly failed to answer tough questions over whether its security forces were protecting the world’s most wanted terrorist or if they just failed to detect his presence in Abbottabad.

For a security establishment that is already accused of playing both sides in the campaign against militancy, providing straight answers are key, going forward. As for the civilian government, it has to take responsibility for Pakistan’s battle against militancy. If that is a lesson it hasn’t learnt one year after OBL’s death, then that is an admission that we are neither interested in getting on the right side of world opinion, nor in setting our own house in order.
-The News

Shamshad Ahmad
Sunday, May 13, 2012


The 21st century did not start well. We found ourselves burdened with the same old problems but in their acutest form. The world has never been so chaotic and violent. Wars of aggression and attrition, invasions in the name of self-defence, military occupations, massacres and genocides, human tragedies and humanitarian catastrophes, and a culture of extremism and violence came to define the new world disorder.

Terrorism as an evil has afflicted humanity for centuries but it assumed global dimension as a scourge of the new millennium only after the 9/11 tragedy. Today, it transcends all boundaries deeply impacting the political, economic and security environment of all regions, countries and societies. It is a faceless enemy with no faith or creed and lurks in the shadows of fear and frustration, breeds despair and disillusionment, and is fed by poverty and ignorance. It is a violent manifestation of growing anger, despair, hatred and frustration over continuing injustice, oppression and denial of fundamental freedoms and rights.

Unfortunately, in the aftermath of 9/11, the detractors of Islam found an opportunity to contrive stereotypes to malign Islam and to mobilise a climate of antipathy against its adherents by focusing obsessively on the religion of the individuals and organisations allegedly involved in terrorist activities. What was being conveniently ignored was the fact that most of the perpetrators of violence were dissident runaways from their own countries long under Western-supported archaic despotic regimes and had a political agenda of their own in their misguided pursuits.

The problem is that the world does not even know how to define terrorism. Other than varied descriptions of violence in all its manifestations, there is no universally accepted definition of terrorism which is today generally viewed as “politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents.” A short legal definition used in the UN for an act of terrorism is the “peacetime equivalent of a war crime.” UN negotiations on long-outstanding draft international convention on terrorism remain inconclusive because of irreconcilable differences on the basic issues.

With the essence of the challenge including the legal scope of the proposed convention yet to be determined, the world is already engaged in what is labelled as a “global war on terror.” This US-led war is being fought on Muslim soils with the stated purpose of eliminating the “roots” of violence and religious extremism. But in effect, it is not the root but the symptom which is being targeted. Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan today epitomize the worst case scenario of this botched and ill-motivated “war on terror.”

Pakistan, in particular, has become the ground zero of the war with a full-fledged military conflict going on within its tribal areas, which are suspected of being a “terrorism sanctuary.” There has been a huge collateral damage in this ongoing operation. The biggest casualty, however, is Pakistan’s own credibility. It has staked everything in this proxy war and has killed thousands of its own people, yet it is being blamed for “not doing enough.”

We never had extremism in our country. Gen Musharraf allowed this monster to grow only to remain relevant in the war on terror and thus prolong his military rule. We also didn’t have this intensity of violence before he took over. The only violence we knew was sectarian in nature. Our involvement in this campaign today complicates our tasks, both at home and at regional and global levels. Our territorial integrity is being violated with impunity. We are accepting the responsibility for crimes we have not committed. There seems to be no end to this incessant blame game.

The world also looks at us with anxiety and suspicion as we have unrivalled distinction of having captured the largest number of Al-Qaeda operatives and handing them over to the US. What is most worrisome at this juncture is that Pakistan is going through one of the most serious crises of its history. With a corrupt and externally vulnerable regime in power, the country is being kept engaged on multiple external and domestic fronts. The Salalah episode and its aftermath have amply tested this government which never had a clear strategic vision of its own and remains totally non-consequential on issues of vital national importance.

What our rulers need to understand is that use of military power within a state and against its own people has never been an acceptable norm. It is considered a recipe for intra-state implosions, a familiar scene in Africa. Excessive use of military force and indiscriminate killings instead of addressing the root causes is not only bringing the government and the armed forces on the wrong side of the people but also weakening the very cause of the war on terror.

After more than a decade-long war on terror, one thing is clear: terrorism will not disappear through campaigns motivated by retaliation and retribution alone. Nabbing or killing of few hundred individuals or changing the leadership in one or two countries will not bring an end to terrorism which in its deeper sense is an ugly manifestation of a mindset, a mindset rooted in a sense of despair and despondency. It is a perverse mindset that needs to be treated like a disease. If war is to be waged, it should be waged against poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy. It should be waged against oppression and injustice.

There can be no two opinions on the need to combat terrorism. But to eliminate this evil we must address its root causes. To address the root causes is not to justify terrorism but to understand it and then to overcome it. To win the war against terrorism we must win the hearts and minds of those who are sympathetic to those who commit terrorism. Having been victims ourselves, we have never condoned acts of terrorism and have been cooperating with the international community in combating this universal evil.

What the world now knows is that terrorism is the product of a broader mix of problems caused by bad governments, opportunistic politicians and militant leaders who exploit grievances. When there are no legitimate means of addressing the massive and systemic political, economic and social inequalities, an environment is created in which peaceful solutions often lose out against extreme and violent alternatives, including terrorism.

Only a steady, measured and comprehensive approach encompassing political, economic, and developmental strategies that focus on the underlying disease rather than the symptoms would bring an enduring solution to this problem. To address the underlying causes of this menace, the world community needs to build global harmony, promote peace and stability, pursue poverty eradication and sustainable development and ensure socio-economic justice as well as respect for fundamental rights of people, particularly the inalienable right of self-determination.

It is time to review our militant strategies and to wind down the costly military operations and domestic hostilities. Force solves no problems. Grievances, be they in Balochistan or in Waziristan must be addressed through political and economic means. If Afghanistan is at the heart of the war on terror, no strategy or roadmap for peace in Afghanistan would be complete without focusing on the underlying causes of conflict and instability in this whole region. For a global response to this challenge, the UN alone has the credentials and wherewithal to broker a US withdrawal as it did for the Soviet withdrawal in the 1980’s while also addressing this time the legitimate questions of Afghanistan’s neutrality and regional and global security concerns.

The writer is a former foreign secretary. Email: shamshad1941@ yahoo.com

The News

May 14, 2012
Aijaz Zaka Syed

It’s been one year since Osama bin Laden was killed in a Hollywood style operation in the picturesque town of Abbottabad. But his shadow still hangs over Pakistan and Afghanistan and the West’s decade-long war though. The man is dead; his oppressive legacy lives on.

The first anniversary of Abbottabad this month saw much chest-thumping in Washington with the US media revisiting Operation Geronimo and dutifully crowing about the deadly skills of America’s bravest against an aging, isolated figure living with his large retinue of wives, children and servants.

Questions have once again been raised about the implausibility of the ‘sheikh’ living right next door to the elite military academy in Abbottabad without catching the eye of the Pakistani agencies all these years. Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar now claims that Pakistan played a ‘vital role’ in the Abbottabad operation!

From beyond his watery grave, Bin Laden continues to cast a long shadow over the US presidential poll race as well. Barack Obama proudly flaunts the Bin Laden trophy as he burnishes his credentials as a war president who accomplished something that eluded his predecessor for eight years. The release of the carefully edited Osama letters last week was part of cashing the chips for the November vote.

On the first anniversary of Abbottabad, the commander-in-chief also paid a ‘surprise’ visit to the troops in Afghanistan before making Hamid Karzai sign on the dotted line in the dead of the night. The ‘strategic partnership pact’ that for most Afghans including their parliament remains the ‘unknown unknown’ – in Rumsfeld’s words – will perpetuate the US presence beyond 2014, when the coalition was supposed to end its military campaign in Afghanistan.

Washington is trying everything to entrench itself in the region, playing emerging players India and China against each other, on the one hand, and deepening the already yawning gulf between India and Pakistan on the other. Hillary Clinton began her trip to India last week in Calcutta with an unusual meeting with West Bengal leader Mamata Banerjee where she waded dangerously deep into the India-Bangladesh water dispute.

In New Delhi, she chose her meeting with Indian counterpart SM Krishna to accuse Pakistan of hosting Bin Laden’s successor Ayman al-Zawahiri, besides lashing Islamabad for not doing “more to fight terror.” In fact, Krishna was much more measured and reasonable in his statement while Clinton took apart America’s so-called ally and friend. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

The other issue on the agenda of course was persuading New Delhi to stop the import of Iranian oil. Although India has so far resisted the US pressure, the oil imports from Tehran are already down 33 percent.

I hate to go down the familiar road but it is precisely this overbearing attitude and divisive agenda that is at the heart of America’s issues with the world. This is what gave birth to the legend of Bin Laden.

Don’t forget Bin Laden wasn’t the founder of Al-Qaeda. It was the brainchild of the late Abdullah Azzam, a charismatic Palestinian revolutionary and teacher who inspired and led thousands of Arab and Muslim fighters in the resistance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Bin Laden was one of those fighters.

Incidentally, the Arabs and Americans were all on the same side and fought alongside the mujahideen. Indeed, the Americans trained the Afghan and Arab fighters, including Bin Laden, with the help of Pakistan of course, driving the Russians out and eventually bringing down the ‘evil empire.’

Bin Laden and the gang turned against their mentors and allies following the first Gulf war and US military interventions in the Middle East. Their anger over the Western interventionist policies, coupled with their ire over Israeli persecution of Palestinians with the blessings of Uncle Sam, turned into an all-consuming rage, ostensibly culminating in the 9/11 and other spectacular attacks attributed to Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups.

Even if Al-Qaeda struck an emotional chord initially with some, the global community that it played to was repelled and outraged by its indiscriminate targeting of innocents in the name of Islam. Indeed the majority of its victims – and those of its fellow travellers – were ironically Muslims, from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Iraq.

It wasn’t just Bin Laden who had in the past few years become isolated and irrelevant, Al-Qaeda itself had become irrelevant and a spent force. Its ranks have fast depleted over the past few years.

According to Pentagon boss Leon Panetta himself, there are no more than 25 to 30 Al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan-Pakistan today. And the credit for this goes not to Washington’s war but largely to the Muslims who have firmly rejected the terror network and its evil ideology and methods.

Over the past year and half, the democratic multitudes across the Middle East have sent a loud and clear message, rejecting not just the tyranny of their elites but the ideology of groups like Al-Qaeda and their claim to speak on their behalf.

But the end of Bin Laden and the near rout of the organisation that he headed isn’t the end of the cause that he championed. As Rami Khouri argued this week, Bin Laden may be dead; Bin Ladenism isn’t. For the causes or factors that gave birth to his cause continue to be around and thrive.

Western imperial games, occupation and militarism in Muslim lands have been the primary sources of the Muslim angst and were the powerful drivers behind the Al-Qaeda-style terror. Shameful and tragic as 9/11 was, many of us hoped it would serve as a wake-up call to America and its allies, leading to the much needed introspection and course correction.

However, it was not to be. Instead of healing the festering wounds of the past, new wars have inflicted fresh wounds, pouring fuel over an already inflamed world and providing ready recruits to Al-Qaeda and fellow travellers.

Double standards, old-fashioned hegemonic ambitions and Israeli lobbies continue to dictate the US policies no matter who’s in the White House. After a promising start, Obama has all but trashed his Mid East peace plan as he follows in the footsteps of his predecessor. No pretence of the peace process now. So much for the ‘change we can’!

So Osama or no Osama, this war will continue for a long time to come. As long as there is no real change in Washington, expect little to change around the world.

The writer is a commentator on Middle East and South Asian affairs. Email: aijaz. syed@hotmail.com

-The News