20 June 2004The Observer
Few people noticed the statement by two Saudi Arabian clerics denouncing attacks, on locals and Westerners alike, by Islamic militants. It came not from the usual tame clerics, but from Safar al-Hawali and Salman al-Auda, two rabble-rousing prayer leaders imprisoned several times for their hardline views.
The statement last week was part of a phenomenon which, though its outlines are barely discernible, give us a glimpse of light at the end of 'the war on terror' tunnel. For, though it is gaining in many areas, the radical Islamic militant movement labelled 'al-Qaeda' is beginning to lose public support in others. This is despite the actions of Bush and Blair, rather than because of them, but is heartening nonetheless. To understand what is happening we need to look at previous Islamic insurgencies.
In both Egypt and Algeria, militancy followed the same trajectory: the terrorists burst on the scene in spectacular fashion, exploiting long-held and profound grievances, riding a wave of popular support and striking with seeming impunity at carefully selected targets. Their campaign provoked massive and vicious repression by the regimes which destroyed the central leadership of the insurgents. Brutalised and leaderless militants, no longer united in one carefully orchestrated campaign, then embarked on increasingly violent and indiscriminate attacks. The result in Egypt was the killing of 68 defenceless tourists at Luxor in 1997 and, in Algeria, the massacres of thousands of innocent villagers.
Instead of being seen by the general population as heroic warriors defending their interests, the militants became baby-killers whose campaigns were morally repugnant (and very bad for the economy). Their legitimacy - and thus the crucial support from the community that is the key for any insurgent fighter - was gone. They became easy pickings for the government. The problem was, at least temporarily, solved.
There are signs that a similar process may be under way with al-Qaeda, albeit on a larger scale. Though the attacks between 1998 and 2001 were the culmination of decades of activism, they can still be seen as the debut of the group on the world stage.
As in Algeria and Egypt, the spectacular strikes provoked a massive counter-terrorist effort. Military operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere destroyed the central al-Qaeda leadership, leading to a breakdown in control. So, where once targets were carefully selected by Osama bin Laden for maximum propaganda value, now, with the influence of bin Laden and his aides limited, there is no careful consideration of public opinion, merely a desire to destroy. Once only targets that many in the Islamic world considered legitimate - symbols of America's military and economic might - were considered. Now the attacks are becoming more random, brutal and indiscriminate.
The results are clear. Collateral damage (i.e. dead Muslims) in strikes in Saudi Arabia last year provoked outrage in much of the Middle East. After the bombs in Istanbul last November, the al-Qaeda offshoot responsible was forced to apologise for the deaths of so many Muslim bystanders. Killing Muslim police officers, guards or soldiers in Iraq or Saudi Arabia is equally unpopular. Ninety per cent of the intelligence reaching Saudi counter-terror specialists, security sources say, comes from disgusted locals.
The attacks last March in Madrid were the most 'off-message' yet. There was no suicide element - guaranteed to inspire a grudging respect among many - and the victims were merely commuters on their way to work, symbolic of nothing other than the universal drudgery of earning a living. Even the reviled Abu Hamza told Arab reporters that the attacks were 'wrong'. The televised execution of an American citizen by an Iraqi militant group last month provoked revulsion, too. As has last week's brutal slaying of Paul Johnson. In Indonesia, Islamist parties, popular after the war in Afghanistan, have received the proverbial kicking at recent polls. The savagery of a series of local attacks has shocked the largely moderate and tolerant inhabitants of the world's biggest Muslim nation.
It is too early to start cheering. The picture is uneven. For every individual turning against terror there is probably someone who is now convinced that force is the only way to 'resist the West'. The cold truth is that the invasion of Iraq seriously set back the 'war on terror'.
Terrorist strikes are only justified - in the eyes of many Muslims - if they are part of a last-ditch struggle against an aggressive West set on humiliating and dominating Islam. Our governments seem to be going out of their way to prove that this is the case. Every incident like Abu Ghraib, every dead civilian in Baghdad and every Israeli tank shell fired on the Gaza Strip makes it easier for the militants to claim convincingly that their campaign of violence, repugnant to so many, is legitimate. The al-Qaeda ideology is still flourishing and strong in many, many parts of the world.
However, though this may not be the beginning of the end of Islamic militancy, it may be the end of the beginning. We are now entering the darkest and most dangerous time, that of indiscriminate, brutal attacks with little central control or direction.
The main reason for the failure of the Islamic revolutions in Algeria and Egypt was that most people wanted nothing to do with men who mutilated and maimed innocent people. In the global context, that holds true too. It is the moderation and humanity of the vast proportion of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims - and their reaction to acts like the beheading of Johnson - that will see us through the darkness that lies ahead and take us towards an end to both terror and the war on it.
