[ppi] [ppiindia] To Europe, Bush is only creating more terrorists

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/29/opinion/edpfaff.php


      To Europe, Bush is only creating more terrorists  
      William Pfaff 

      SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2006
     


     
      PARIS The difference between official American and European perceptions 
of terrorism has serious practical consequences for trans-Atlantic cooperation. 

      At the police and intelligence level, all goes reasonably well, or did 
until the public uproar in Europe about alleged official cooperation with the 
CIA's secret "rendition" and interrogation operations. 


      On the other hand, last Monday, France blocked a proposed NATO-European 
Union meeting on terrorism because NATO "was not intended to be the world's 
gendarme." It is a military defense alliance of equal partners. A French 
diplomat said, "we do not wish to have NATO involved in everything, or imposing 
its agenda on the EU." 

      This is part of France's consistent opposition to equally consistent 
American efforts to turn NATO into an agent of U.S. policy, and to convince the 
EU's members that NATO should be the exclusive security organization of the 
Western alliance, and that Europe should abandon its embryonic independent 
security policy and European rapid reaction force. 

      There is nothing new in this this trans-Atlantic disagreement, but it 
does point to a serious terrorism issue: how the threat is to be defined, which 
in turn implies how it should be met. 

      The Bush administration is firmly committed to the notion that Al Qaeda 
presents a military problem that requires a military solution. It has to stick 
to this story or else it has no explanation for the invasions of Afghanistan 
and Iraq. So President George W. Bush keeps making speeches about Al Qaeda's 
supposed conviction that it could go from success in Iraq to mobilizing all of 
Islam, restoring the Grand Caliphate of the eighth and ninth centuries, and 
conquering the world. That's a military problem. 

      The Europeans, in general, think otherwise. Rik Coolsaet, of Ghent 
University and the Belgian Royal Institute for International Relations, notes 
that while some European analysts agree with Washington's position, most see 
terrorism in Europe as "a patchwork of self-radicalizing cells with 
international contacts," lacking central direction. 

      Addressing The Transatlantic Dialogue on Terrorism at The Hague in 
December, Coolsaet said that at most European terrorism is described as an 
affair of "concentric circles around a still lethal Al Qaeda core." The first 
circle is composed of "more or less structured" organizations, surrounded by a 
loose and informal third circle of freelance militants. 

      International counterterrorism is said to have been successful in 
"degrading Al Qaeda as an organization and in decreasing its ability to conduct 
massive attacks." What survives is "a patchwork of homegrown networks and 'lone 
wolves,' where almost everyone can be linked, at least indirectly, to almost 
everyone else," but in casual and nonoperational ways. 

      Thus the phenomenon of Muslim extremism in Europe is largely back to what 
it was before 9/11 and the panicked international reaction that followed, 
"unduly exaggerating the importance of Al Qaeda." 

      Coolsaet notes that European security agencies have reported "a growing 
tendency of self-radicalization and self-recruitment." The latter is now 
thought to be more important in producing jihad candidates "than any organized 
international network," possibly excepting the networks recruiting for Iraq. 

      This radicalization of young Muslim militants in Europe is superficially 
religious, but usually takes place outside mosques and "more often than not 
involves individuals with college education." 

      The sources of extremism are social and political alienation, exclusion 
(and unemployment) among the offspring of immigrant communities, but the 
international drama mobilizes them. 

      Coolsaet says that when Bush declares that America is fighting jihadists 
in Iraq so as not to fight them at home, most European counterterrorism 
officials find that just the opposite is true: The more the fighting in Iraq 
and Afghanistan intensifies, the more the number of would-be terrorists in 
Europe increases. 

      He has a reassuring comment, however, on the trajectory of terrorism. To 
reidentify himself as a jihadist, the recruit must dissociate himself from his 
own society, politicize his views and look for groups with a similar 
radicalized worldview. "Groupthink gradually eliminates alternative views, 
simplifies reality," and causes the candidate-terrorist to "dehumanize" all who 
disagree - especially his fellow-Muslims. 

      "Ultimately, this strategy is self-defeating and will signify these 
groups' defeat, as was the case with Europe's left-wing terrorist groups in the 
1970s, and the anarchist terrorists in the 1890s." It isolates them from the 
community on whose behalf they think they are acting. 

     


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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