Here are my answers to some questions posed by Fars Press, an Iranian news agency in Iran.
Q. What is NATO’s function to bring stable and security to Afganistan, and as we see Afganistan is unstable and insecure and also the Taliban threat has increased, how do you evaluate it?
A. Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general wisecracked that the function of NATO was “to keep the Americans in Europe, the Russians out, and the Germans down.” With the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization needed a new purpose. The Neoconservatives who recently have dominated American foreign policy were quick to see the organization as a potential tool for intervention in the Muslim world–despite the fact that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan (nor Bosnia which formed the precedent for this expansion of the NATO mission) are anywhere near the “North Atlantic.” Has the mission changed to one of keeping the Americans in the Muslim world, the jihadis out and the Muslims down? If so, the policy seems to be failing on the second point because al-Qaida is now in Iraq and in Pakistan, the Taliban seem to have obtained a new life in Afghanistan, and the occupation of Iraq, while keeping the Muslims down, has encouraged extremists to replace a long-standing coexistence between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq with a sectarian warfare exceeding anywhere else in the Muslim world.
Q. Given that one excuse to enter Iraq and Afganistan was to suppress terrorism, how do you see the occupation functioning in Iraq and Afganistan?
A. Terrorism in both Iraq and Afghanistan have increased. More to the point, the argument that fighting the terrorists there keeps them out of the West has been proven false by the bombings in London and Madrid. The occupation of Iraq has threatened the unity of Iraq and the occupation of Afghanistan has threatened the integrity of Pakistan. Pursuing the terrorists in Afghanistan made logical sense, but the pursuit, capture and punishment of those responsible for the 9-11 attacks on America got lost in the heat of “nation-building” with the consequence that the criminals who declared war on America remain at large while a new wave of enemies has been cultivated. Invading Iraq was a gratuitous act with no credible connection to 9-11 that, apart from the benefits accrued to the Kurds by their current autonomy, has been an unmitigated disaster.
Q. As you know, the US and UK are facing terrorism problems in their country. Did they come to Iraq to solve this problem?
A. The Bush administration does not tire of asserting that they are fighting the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan so they won’t have to fight them here, yet the justice department has claimed to have foiled terrorist plots in the United States. The fact that such plots, if real, are probably not under the direction of al-Qaida, is not a sign of success of a war against al-Qaida, but of the fact that al-Qaida made a strategic decision not to attack the United States in the short term. According to social scientist Robert Pape, “an actual al-Qaeda planning document found by Norwegian intelligence … says that al-Qaeda should not try to attack the continent of the United States in the short term but instead should focus its energies on hitting America’s allies in order to try to split the coalition. … [After analyzing] whether they should hit Britain, Poland, or Spain. It concludes that they should hit Spain just before the March 2004 elections because, and I am quoting almost verbatim: Spain could not withstand two, maximum three, blows before withdrawing from the coalition, and then others would fall like dominoes.” (http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html). The implication is that the terrorists seek to use the short-term to take advantage of the increasing resentment of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan to garner recruit new recruits for their war against America, whom they call “the far enemy.” If they fail it will not be because America is occupying those countries–the occupation does help the terrorists to recruit from the angry and alienated populations–but rather because the terrorists’ own brutality is just as effective at alienating the locals who will strategically choose to cooperate with Westerners to rid themselves of these other foreigners without altering in their intention to resume the resistance once they have disposed of the hirabi Muslim interventionists.
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad
Minaret of Freedom Institute
minaret.org
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