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How safe is the world today?
THREE statements from three international personalities of three completely different callings following the last BushKerry debate have made news. Although the subject matter that stimulated the comments is one and the same, the tone and tenor of the comments are similar in the case of two that disprove President Bush's view of the current state of global security. The third, by the very nature of its substance, accords a very different character to the subject that it relates to. None of the comments, however, were intended as a direct response to Mr. Bush's hackneyed cliche of how safe the world was after Saddam.
The first two comments, those of the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and ex-chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq Hans Blix, made very recently at different places while responding to the question as to whether the war on terrorism has rendered the globe safer, echoed
one another. The replies were an unequivocal no.
The UN Secretary General was quite clear when he told the Dimbleby programme on ITV television: "The Iraq war has done little to increase security across the world or halt the activities of international terrorists. I cannot say the world is safer when you consider the violence around us ... and see the terrorist attacks around the world and you see what is going on in Iraq." The UN Secretary General did
to not mince words when he stressed the need for a proactive role of the international community to improve security around the world.
Hans Blix in an interview with Reuters said: "The acknowledged gain of the war was that a treacherous and murderous dictator was removed, but the rest has been tragedy and failure ... It has stimulated terrorism."
The third, that of the Russian President Mr. Putin, indirectly endorsed not only Bush's "war on terror," but also his candidature for re-election as US president. He told a news conference recently: "The attacks of international terrorism in Iraq are directed not only at interna-
tional coalition forces but at President Bush personally. International terrorism has given itself the goal of causing maximum damage to Bush in the election battle, the goal of blocking the re-election of Bush for a second presidential term."
While no one can question the Russian president's predilection for a particular candidate in the US election, the motives he ascribes to the insurgents in Iraq are rather extraordinary, and many would find it hard to agree with him.
Without going into the motivations behind Mr. Putin's remarks, it would be worthwhile to relate all three comments to the current world security situation.
The obvious question that one is faced with is, are we as global inhabitants safer now than we were before the start of the so-called war on terror? Let's take the issue of global terrorism first.
Many would claim that the insurgents and indeed the Muslim militants that the US is faced with have much to thank Bush for by projecting them to the position that they are in today. It is because of Mr. Bush and not in spite of him that the views of the terrorists find resonance in many parts of the world. For
instance, according to Adam Curtis (who has been called by media critics the most acclaimed maker of serious television programmes in Britain): "The group [Al-Qaeda]
didn't even have a name until early 2001 when the US government decided to prosecute the small group and needed to give it a name in order to use anti-Mafia style laws against it."
Also, think tanks, experts and watchers of global terrorism are all in accord that, instead of stemming
the escalation of terrorism, the war on terror has helped to spawn the phenomenon further. Even, going by the State Department report, there have been more incidents of terrorist attacks all over the world, with the primary targets being the US interests and that of its allies in the said war, since the "war on terror" was launched.
As for crippling Al-Qaeda, the Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS), a British think tank, in its report on terrorism published in May 2004 reveals the startling fact that since the US war on terror commenced the Al-Qaeda ranks have been invigorated rather than stunted, and as many as 18,000 potential terrorist are scat-
tered all over the world.
The Afghan war, according to the same report, has helped rather than hurt the Al-Qaeda, and the US tactics in Iraq has engendered a sort of violence that the country was not hitherto exposed to. Allawi's recent statement that his country is faced with three different types of terrorism testifies to this fact. A secular country, which Iraq once was, has come to face a prospect of either being truncated into three, or a civil war with unimaginable conse-
quences.
Interestingly, some commentators are now coming out with the fact that the threat of Al-Qaeda was greatly overblown, particularly by politicians who, again according to Curtis "in a post-ideological age, increasingly use fear, rather than vision, to bolster their positions." Curtis is highly critical of the British visual media for helping to reinforce the myth by its unseemly obsession with "Islamic terrorism."
The myth of WMD in Iraq has been fully exposed. The obvious question that comes up is whether there are fewer WMDs today than before "Operations Iraqi Freedom" was launched. There are reasons to believe that certain countries are
continuing with their nuclear programmes.
The Palestine issue, that appears to have gone onto the backburner, has all the potential to engulf the region, if not the world, and remains a valid threat to global peace.
And no less a person than the UN Secretary General has said that the Bush doctrine of preemption is, "a grave threat to international peace and security, since it might imply that any state has the right to use force whenever it sees fit, without regard to other states' concerns."
At the risk of sounding facetious, both Mr. Putin and bin-Laden would vote for Bush if they could, of course for quite the different reasons. One can guess Putin's motive and Pepe Escobar, writing in Hong Kong's Asia Times sums up Laden's incentive. He says: "Bin Laden is laughing: Bush's crusade has legitimised an obscure sect as a worldwide symbol of political revolt. How could bin Laden not vote for Bush?"
As for Mr. Bush, he will continue to exploit terrorism to ride the crest of American sentiments to win the election. The "war on terror" will continue to be pursued, and the world will "continue to remain safe."
If what we are experiencing today is a "safe world" one shudders to think what an "unsafe world" would be like.
The author is Editor, Defence and Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.