Rising East Online

Multiculturalism and the ‘war on terror’

How the ‘War on Terror’ helps terrorism

— Jan Van Der Crabben

International terrorism, with Al Qaeda as its leading ideological organization, has never seen better days. The ‘War on Terror’ has fuelled terrorism and caused tension in Western societies, resulting in a heightened sense of global instability. Al Qaeda is not, as commonly believed, a devilish enterprise of mindless killings, but a political enterprise with no state and no army. Like any other political organ, it has political goals and strategies for how to achieve them.

The ‘War on Terror’ has greatly helped Al Qaeda to achieve its goals by causing discussion, dissent, alienation and radicalisation in multi-ethnic communities in Western Europe. Western military acts legitimise terrorist ideologies and/or activities in the eyes of members of some minorities in Western societies, leading to Western self-criticism, demonstrations, pressure groups, and the 7/7 London bombings (conducted by British citizens). The true threat to the Western Way of Life is not found in the Middle East, but in our own society.

Globalisation, Grievances, and Terrorism

While international terrorism is often portrayed as fanatical and mindless killing of innocent people, it is founded on actual grievances, be they economic, cultural, or ideological. As Roger Scruton argues in The West and the Rest, Muslims in the Middle East are largely contemptuous of the regimes that govern them – and often blame the West for installing them.1 Globalization, for the West, means free trade and prosperity, but for its opponents (including supporters of Al Qaeda), it means a loss of cultural identity, as many scholars have argued long before 9/11. Christopher Coker believes that thus, for disaffected people in many parts of the world the loss of identity has caused a turn towards ideology.2

Al Qaeda offers an ideology that opposes the West, while it strives to restore an Islamic identity. It offers a return to a pre-modern society, which it believes will solve the problems caused by modernity and globalisation. This notion is fuelled by the existence of oppressive regimes in the Middle East which, to many Muslims, are 'a reminder that power and corruption will rule this world until the reign established by the Prophet is restored.' 3

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The Politics of Al Qaeda

Albeit the exact political goals of Al Qaeda are veiled in speeches filled with allusions, propaganda, and fanatical hatred for the West (framed in an Islamic context), one can make deductions from Osama bin Laden's background, his public statements to the West, and ‘reading between the lines.’ Stefan Aubrey argues that, unlike Cold War terrorist organisations, Al Qaeda has long-term political goals and does not expect immediate results. The final goal is the creation of a so-called Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East.4 In order to achieve this goal, the current Middle Eastern governments must be removed, which is best achieved by first forcing the West to withdraw financial support, military presence, and investments from the region – thereby destabilizing the Middle East. Thus, attacking authoritarian governments in the Middle East is less effective than attacking liberal societies in order to make their citizens force governments to withdraw from the Middle East. Once that is achieved, tackling Middle Eastern governments, Osama bin Laden appears to believe, will become much easier.

Carl von Clausewitz, the ‘father of strategy,’ created the theoretical framework for the understanding of war in the early nineteenth century. Surprisingly, his theory of trinitarian warfare is ever more important – for Western governments and terrorists alike. In Clausewitz' trinity, war is divided into three levels of action: the rational sphere of politics, the material sphere of the military, and the emotional sphere of the people.5 While Western governments are vastly superior in the military sphere, Al Qaeda has to resort to non-military means, i.e. terrorism, to achieve political goals. The power base of international terrorism lies in the emotional sphere of the people, as it is there that the tools for their war come from.

Al Qaeda is paradoxically using both terror and sympathy for its war – striking terror into those societies who are not sympathetic, and gaining the sympathies of Muslim minorities within those societies, as the West (comprised of open and democratic societies which are becoming increasingly multi-ethnic) is best pressurised from within. Using the emotions of the people and playing them against their government appears to be Al Qaeda's strategy. In the case of Madrid, it worked: Three days after the Madrid bombings, the Spanish people elected the Socialists under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to power, who subsequently withdrew all Spanish troops from Iraq.6 Thus, the strategy of Al Qaeda, or rather its ideological followers who conducted the bombings, were successful in achieving political goals, namely removing Spanish troops from the Middle East. Considering that Spain was not one of the major contributors in the Iraq War, the achievement was a minor one, but nonetheless successful.

Clearly, terrorism does not always create such overtly successful results. The September 11^th 2001 attacks in New York caused the ‘War on Terror,’ the invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the hunt for Al Qaeda leaders. Underneath the surface, though, it may have aided Islamic terrorism in achieving its political goals. The invasion of Iraq, in clear defiance of international law, has caused more people to subscribe to terrorism, as it constitutes a legitimisation of terrorist acts for them: 'By a perverse paradox, [military intervention] intended to stop terrorism in its tracks, frequently has the effect of provoking it and providing a ready-made justification for it.'7 Since the invasion of Iraq, Madrid and London were targets of major terrorist attacks, people are abducted in Iraq on an almost daily basis, and 'the Iraqi war has added to Muslim resentment of America and thus, it is argued, deepened the reservoir of recruits for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.'8

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A Recipe for Disaster

As Roger Scruton argues, Islamic thought is in direct contradiction with the idea of a nation-sate, as the concepts of citizenship and nationhood are products of the Enlightenment and Christian theology. While, in the Christian tradition, there have always been two authorities, secular law and divine law, the Muslim tradition (based on the Caliphate) does not make such a distinction.9 Thus, for the pious Muslim it is hard to accept that secular and divine law may, at points, contradict. The recent international outrage against the publication of cartoons in Denmark, clearly illustrates this. Not only did Muslims demand an apology from the Danish government, but also boycotted Danish products – thus boycotting the Danish nation as a whole.

If it is hard for Muslims living in the West to accept the division of secular and divine law, some are also in direct conflict with the laws of the countries they live in. This may be a reason to feel alienated or oppressed – at the very least it makes identifying with host countries problematic. If countries such as Great Britain conduct an illegal war in a Muslim country, its Muslim community is forced into an even greater identity crisis: ‘I do not feel 100% British, but I feel Muslim. Who shall I support then?’ The scale of anti-war and anti-Danish-cartoons demonstrations in London clearly show who the British Muslim community supports. While the demonstrators stayed within the legal framework of the UK, the suicide bombers of 7/7 (who grew up in England) chose to support their Muslim ‘brothers’ of the Islamic umma in Iraq and elsewhere by more extreme means. When one combines this notion of justification, the alienation of diasporic communities, and the political goals of Al Qaeda, one can clearly see that the ‘War on Terror’ constitutes a recipe for disaster.

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The Weakness Within

Thus, if the intermediate political goal of Al Qaeda is to make Western governments to withdraw from the Middle East, and the strategy to achieve this is to mobilise the citizens of Western countries to pressurise their governments, it may work. The threats to our society, as Ulrich Beck observed in 1986, no longer come from external enemies, but from tensions within society.10

The battle-grounds that the terrorists are fighting for are, for the most part, not the oil fields of Iraq, or the streets of Basra. The terrorists cannot achieve their political goals there. They are fighting for the minds of some Western citizens – mainly Muslim minorities who can demonstrate, vote, and exert pressure on their governments. While Western armies are fighting in Iraq, governments should not forget that the real weakness is within their own jurisdiction.

Jan Van Der Crabben is just starting his doctorate, having recently completed an MA in War Studies

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Notes

1. Scruton, Roger (2002), The West and the Rest: Globalisation and the Terrorist Threat (London: Continuum)
2. Coker, Christopher (2002), Globalisation and Insecurity in the Twenty-first Century: NATO and the Management of Risk, Adelphi Paper 345 (London: Oxford University Press for IISS), p. 25.
3. Scruton, Roger (2002), The West and the Rest: Globalisation and the Terrorist Threat (London: Continuum), p. 126.
4. Aubrey, Stefan M. (2004), The New Dimension of International Terrorism (Zürich: vdf Hochschulverlag), p. 3.
5. Clausewitz, Carl von (1832), Vom Kriege (Frankfurt a. M.: Ullstein Verlag), p. 46.
6. Economist (2004), 'Waking up to reality' in The Economist, 22 April 2004.
7. Roberts, Adam (2005), 'The "War on Terror" in Historical Perspective' in Survival Vol. 47, No. 2, Summer 2005 (Oxford University Press for the IISS), p. 120.
8. Economist (2004), 'Fumbling the moment' in The Economist, 27 May 2004.
9. Scruton, Roger (2002), The West and the Rest: Globalisation and the Terrorist Threat (London: Continuum), pp. 52, 66.
10. Beck, Ulrich (1986), Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp), p. 25.

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