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Introduction: The post-9/11 analyses spawned by the CIA and the MI-6, even from Asia, has been uncritically accepting and reflecting/disseminating the distorted American spin and perceptions. The Madrid blasts once again underline the misplaced focus on bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and reliance on military superiority.
On September 17, 2001, six days after the terrorist strikes in the US, I had written an article, Of Elephants And Cockroaches. I would urge a reading of the same today. Many of my observations made then remain as valid today as they were on 9/17.
The Madrid blasts of March 11, 2004, prove, if further proof was needed, that the USA's McCounterterrorism, with its focus exclusively on bin Laden and Al Qaeda and with its misplaced reliance on the USA's military superiority in dealing with jihadi terrorism, has come in the way of effective action against the menace.
The Cold War saw the mushrooming and flourishing of a large crop of McAnalysts on international communism, whose thinking and analyses were largely influenced by the US perspective. The Disinformation Divisions of the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the UK's MI-6, its external intelligence agency, skilfully used these McAnalysts by feeding them often fabricated data to project before the international community an image of international communism as a monolith.
Analysts in the rest of the world such as this writer, who was dealing with International Communism in the 1960s and who questioned the US perspective and the analyses of these CIA/ MI-6 funded McAnalysts, were derisively dismissed as not being able to understand the problem. This dismissive attitude of the US analysts remained even after the USSR and China fell out and other cracks appeared in the Communist world. The Americans never like to admit their mistakes and they never did.
One saw a similar attitude with regard to Iraq and its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). A new crop of McAnalysts was spawned by the CIA and the MI-6, who lapped up everything fed to them by these agencies -- whether relating to Iraq's possession of WMDs, Saddam Hussein's alleged links with Al Qaeda or his alleged suppression of the Shias.
Independent professionals such as Hans Blix and analysts who questioned their analyses and conclusions were derisively dismissed. bin Laden strongly disliked Saddam and hence there was no question of Saddam's links with Al Qaeda. Saddam suppressed all religious clerics and fundamentalists, whether Shias or Sunnis, and it would be wrong to accuse him of suppressing only the Shias.
Some of the very same McAnalysts, who now project before the world scarry stories of how Saddam was suppressing the Shias, had been writing in the 1980s, when Saddam was the USA's blue-eyed boy, as to how generous he was in his treatment of the Shias. The current wave of deaths and destruction in Iraq could be attributed to such wrong analyses and assessments and action based on them.
Since bin Laden formed his International Islamic Front (IIF) in February 1998, I must have written over 50 articles pointing out that the campaign against terrorism should focus on the various components of the IIF, instead of exclusively on Al Qaeda and bin Laden. Al Qaeda is only one component of the IIF, but there are at least 12 others active in different countries of the world. They operate sometimes independently, sometimes under the over-all direction of the command and control of the IIF leadership. Till last year, the command and control of the IIF was being exercised by bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Since around April last year, it is being exercised by Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET).
The IIF is not a jihadi monolith. It is a disparate group of jihadi terrorists. They are united only by their shared anger against the USA and Israel and by their pan-Islamic fervour. Otherwise, there are ideological, doctrinal and sectarian differences and even ego clashes arising from their differing cultural and national backgrounds. The international community has not been able to take advantage of these differences and create a split amongst them because it has not attempted to understand and analyse them. The jihadi terrorists know and understand us better than we understand them. They have been able to create a split in our ranks after the Spanish elections while we are unable to create one in their ranks.
It is important that each terrorist incident is analysed from the perspective of the IIF and not from that of Al Qaeda alone. Al Qaeda dared to stage a terrorist Pearl Harbour in the US. One can understand the US anger against Al Qaeda and bin Laden, but the US has allowed this anger to distort its analysis of the problem of jihadi terrorism faced by the international community today. As a result, they tend to see the hand and the shadow of Al Qaeda and bin Laden everywhere and miss other hands and shadows, which are equally, if not more, active destructively.
The post-9/11 crop of McAnalysts of terrorism and counter- terrorism spawned by the CIA and the MI-6, many of them even from Asia, has been uncritically accepting and reflecting/ disseminating the distorted American analyses and perceptions. The result: One surprise after another. One tragedy after another.
As I had pointed out in the past, by the way the US and its crop of McAnalysts have projected bin Laden and Al Qaeda, they have unwittingly made them appear in the minds of the Muslim community as a new Super Power standing up to the USA and bin Laden as the Napoleon of international terrorism. These projections are coming home to roost. Before 1998, there were many critics of bin Laden in the Muslim communities of the world. Today, there are hardly any outside India, thanks to the USA's unwise handling.
If we have to make headway in dealing with international jihadi terrorism it is important that each country facing this problem analyses it independently from its own perspective instead of letting itself be influenced by the US perspective. International co-operation is very important. So is the US role. No other country has the kind of resources, capabilities and determination to succeed that the US has. While continuing to co-operate with the US to the extent necessary and desirable, we should take care not to let our judgement be unduly influenced by the US perspective.
B. Raman is Additional Secretary
(retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director,
Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor,
Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.
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