Bin Laden's death is no game changer
by Nhu Hoa
After the celebration that followed the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death the political analysis began and one thing seems clear: bin Laden's death is not a breakthrough in the fight against terrorism around the world.
Former US Vice President Dick Cheney, a vocal critic of President Barack Obama's anti-terror policy since the end of the Bush administration, said that though the death of bin Laden was an important step, it didn't end the fight against the terrorism that culminated in the catastrophic events of 9/11.
"Al-Qaeda remains a dangerous enemy," Cheney said. "Though bin Laden is dead, the war goes on."
Al-Qaeda, while confirming the death of its leader bin Laden, vowed the jihadist (holy war) network would live on.
"What is coming is greater and worse and what is awaiting you is more intense and harmful," the group said in a statement.
The final audio tape that bin Laden recorded before being killed by American commandos warned: "America will not be able to dream of security."
Yu Wanli, an associate professor of the School of International Studies of Beijing University, told Xinhua that bin Laden's death wouldn't fundamentally change the whole picture of the terror war around the world, particularly in Afghanistan.
Why is this so?
Political analysts say the international terror network is specially organised and include thousands of sub-networks which operate independently but share the common strategy of "global jihadi".
Colonel Le The Mau, a senior official of the Vietnamese Ministry of Defence's Military Strategy Institute and foreign affairs commentator, said that commandos in the al-Qaeda network made their own decisions without reference to bin Laden.
"So, the death of bin Laden would only make them lose their spirit for a while but the network will still operate as normal," Mau said.
He said there were a number of regions where the convergence of organised crime, drug trafficking and terrorism made the fight against terrorism more complicated.
A typical example was Afghanistan.
Jane's Intelligence Review claimed that before the US began the war in Afghanistan "poppy cultivation has almost totally disappeared" from the areas of Afghanistan under Taliban control but now there was a "a rising tide of narcotics, both opium and the heroin refined from it", flooding out of the northeast corner of Afghanistan under the control of America's new anti-Taliban allies.
Meanwhile, the "global war on terror" that George Bush once declared after 9/11, and what President Barack Obama called an "overseas contingency operation", has gone on for nearly 10 years but the struggle shows no sign of "game over".
Three reasons could be mentioned, according to Colonel Mau.
First of all, the definition of terrorism has proved controversial among countries and organisations.
Mau's assessment is supported by scholar Bruce Hoffman who noted: "Terrorism is a pejorative term. It is a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents or to those with whom one disagrees and would otherwise prefer to ignore. Hence the decision to call someone or label some organisation ‘terrorist' becomes almost unavoidably subjective."
Mau said the US called Hamas or the Islamic Resistance Movement of Palestine, an international terrorist organisation in 1995, 1996 and 2001 but Russia maintained contact with the Hamas and didn't consider Hamas a terrorist organisation.
So, over 100 definitions had been counted but at least half of them were contradictory.
Even the United Nation had worked out a draft comprehensive convention on international terrorism since 1996 but its status now was "under negotiation in the UN Ad Hoc Committee", Mau said.
In its most simple term, terrorism expert Walter Laqueur concluded, the "only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence".
The second reason, Mau said, was that the roots of terrorism had not been destroyed because there was no agreement on where terrorism originated.
"During the past 10 years, the world has witnessed a paradox with no solution. The more effort the US spends on fighting terrorism, the more the terrorists increase in scale and in regions such as Europe, Africa, Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan . . ." Mau said.
The New York Times claimed the American invasion of Iraq had helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicals and that the overall terrorist threat had grown since the 9/11 attacks.
The BBC, picking up on the New York Times assessment, added that even though the Bush Administration rightly pointed out that extremists were there before the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq invasion, the invasion and the war on terrorism had certainly created new terrorists and that much of it was "American's own making".
The final issue was how to fight terrorism, Mau said.
An article in The Guardian said decentralising was always a part of the strategy of bin Laden.
"Though the death of bin Laden will fundamentally change the landscape of contemporary militancy it will thus not necessarily have a big immediate effect on affiliate groups beyond discouraging their leadership by showing how, even if it takes 10 years, fugitives do eventually get caught and killed," it said.
Many countries say that in order to fight terrorism, they need an intelligence agency, police and economic and propaganda methods. However, the US uses the world's biggest military force to set up its presence in strategically important fields such as Afghanistan, Iraq and other Central Asian countries.
The fight against terrorism will only reach its turning point when the international community spends its efforts on a common interest, not for any nation's own target.— VNS