The
Fourth World War
By
Doug Saunders
Globe
& Mail, Canada
07 September, 2003
If
you happen to find yourself in Nouakchott, a dusty and rarely visited
city of three million on the far western edge of the Sahara, you may
be surprised to find an unlikely sort of character hanging around government
buildings and better hotels. These new strangers, whose ranks have been
growing steadily in recent months, are a species of serious-looking
American men who bear little resemblance to the oil explorers and motorcycle
adventurers who until recently were this city's only foreign visitors.
These men, the first
Americans in decades to pay any attention to this poor region, began
to appear only in the past two years. With their grim and purposeful
presence, they bring a Graham Greene sort of mood to this very remote
outpost, but instead of seersucker suits and Panama hats, they tend
to wear floppy safari hats and sunglasses, the unofficial uniform of
the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Special Forces.
What are these quiet
Americans doing in the capital of Mauritania, a nation that has never
made the front pages and sits a continent and a half removed from the
immediate interests of the United States? And what are their colleagues
in a dozen other far-flung regions doing, handing out money and guns
and hard-won secrets to governments and warlords and military men in
the southern islands of the Philippines, on the steppes of Uzbekistan,
in the dense jungle between Venezuela and Brazil?
The guys in the
sunglasses have a name for this not-so-secret campaign. They call it
World War Four, an unofficial title that is now used routinely by top
officials and ground-level operatives in the U.S. military and the CIA.
It is a global war, one of the most expensive and complex in world history.
And it will mark its second anniversary this week, on Sept. 11.
The White House
would rather it be known as the war on terrorism. But in its strategies,
political risk and secrecy, it is more like the Cold War, which the
CIA types like to consider World War Three. Its central battles, in
Afghanistan and Iraq, have been traditional conflicts. But while the
public's attention was focused on those big, controversial and expensive
campaigns, the United States was busy launching a broader war whose
battlefields have spread quietly to two dozen countries.
Iraq also was a
distraction in another way: It was a shocking and awesome display of
conventional military might that is not at all typical of the stealth,
spy craft, diplomacy and dirty tricks being employed in the wider war
on terrorism. Likewise, "although Operation Enduring Freedom in
Afghanistan understandably captured the imagination and attention of
the press and public," said William Rosenau, a former senior policy
adviser in the State Department, "large-scale military operations
are arguably the smallest aspect of the counterterrorism campaign. That
campaign resembles an iceberg, with the military component at the top,
visible above the water."
Below the surface
are dozens of operations, some secret and some simply unnoticed, conducted
by the CIA, the FBI, the diplomatic corps and small, elite military
squads. They have been aided by changes to U.S. laws after Sept. 11
that allow Americans to do things once forbidden -- such as assassinating
foreign figures.
And much of the
war is being fought by foreign governments that are willing and able
to do things Americans wouldn't or couldn't. "We simply don't have
the resources, or the inclination, to be everywhere the terrorists and
their supporters are, so we have no choice but to co-operate with other
countries and their security services," Mr. Rosenau said during
a panel discussion in Washington last week.
In some cases, that
co-operation has led the United States to endorse and enable activities
that are deeply unsavoury, all in the name of stomping out terrorism.
"Counterterrorism is now 90 per cent law enforcement and intelligence,"
said Jonathan Stevenson, a senior strategist with the International
Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "Since Sept. 11, the
only overt military actions have been the Predator [missile] strike
in Yemen, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and I don't think
there will be many more. I think there's a much higher priority placed
on law enforcement and intelligence now. It's not a traditional war."
Whether this is
actually a world war, or a large-scale police action, or (as both critics
and some supporters say) the gestation of a new American imperialism,
there is no question that it has come to span the globe. It has caused
mammoth shifts in global allegiances, in the positioning of U.S. military
bases and CIA stations, in the flow of aid dollars, soldiers and arms
across distant borders, on a scale not seen since the Cold War began.
Over the summer,
while the world's attention was focused on Iraq, the Pentagon was busily
preparing to shift hundreds of thousands of soldiers to new real estate,
in places most Westerners known little about, in preparation for a world
war that could last decades. "Everything is going to move everywhere,"
Pentagon undersecretary Douglas Feith said. "There is not going
to be a place in the world where it's going to be the same as it used
to be."
On Sept. 11, 2001,
the world looked much as it had in the 1950s, even though the Cold War
had been over for a decade. Huge concentrations of American soldiers
were based in Germany, in Japan's outlying islands, and in South Korea.
It was around this
time that Eliot Cohen, a military strategist and historian, referred
to "World War Four" in a Wall Street Journal article that
caught the eye of many Washington officials. James Woolsey, the former
CIA director, began to use the phrase last year in speeches calling
for a far wider sphere of covert activity.
The White House
officially objected to the phrase as senseless, even offensive: The
first two world wars had real enemies and real victories, and together
killed 60 million soldiers and civilians. The Cold War wasn't a world
war at all, but the avoidance of one. And this new operation is a "war"
against an improper noun, whose enemy was not a nation nor even an ideology
but a strategy, and its death toll, including both its actual wars,
remains in the thousands.
Still, it has caught
on, both among the stern-faced guys on the ground and in Washington's
hawkish policy circles. General Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central
Command, was in Addis Ababa this summer to announce that Africa's east
coast had become a region of great strategic importance. "We are
in the midst of World War Four," he told his audience, before imploring
them to arrest local Islamist leaders in exchange for $100-million in
aid, "with an insidious web of international terrorists."
As well, the general
and his colleagues are acting as though it's a world war, or at least
a global operation on the scale of the Cold War. They are building a
new kind of military, one that will be based in lonely places we've
never heard of, and doing things we won't often hear about.
"As we pursue
the global war on terrorism, we're going to have to go where the terrorists
are," explained Gen. James Jones, head of the U.S. military's European
Command. "And we're seeing some evidence, at least preliminary,
that more and more of these large uncontrolled, ungoverned areas are
going to be potential havens for that kind of activity."
So American soldiers
and spooks are moving out of Germany and into Africa -- the east now,
and soon into the western Sahara and the northern Mediterranean coast
as well. They are moving out of Japan and Korea and into Southeast Asia,
which has the world's largest Muslim population and is believed to be
the area at highest risk of al-Qaeda outbreaks. This fall, large numbers
of U.S. soldiers are expected to land in the southern Philippines, whose
Muslim terrorists are accused of having links to al-Qaeda.
And the soldiers
are also manning bases created in such central Asian republics as Uzbekistan
for the Afghan war, and on the Black Sea in Bulgaria and Romania for
the Iraq conflict, but now expected to become permanent.
And even farther
afield will be hundreds of new outposts that Gen. Jones refers to as
"warm bases," "lily pads" and "virtual bases"
-- temporary, stealthy or secret operations mounted with the help of
local regimes.
This has led the
United States into some highly unlikely allegiances, which may or may
not be directly related to the immediate threat of Osama bin Laden's
circle. For example, it is conducting stealth operations in South America
-- in the "tri-border" jungle region between Brazil, Paraguay
and Argentina, and on Venezuela's exotic Margarita Island, both of which
are home to large populations of Saudi Arabian expatriates. It is not
clear whether there are actual terrorists here, or simply people who
have sent money to terrorists, or if accusations of terrorism are being
used to support local conflicts and to attract U.S. aid.
"The downside,"
said Herman Cohen, former U.S. secretary of state for Africa, "is
that you can take on the agenda of local leaders."
To understand the
astonishing scope and morally swampy ground of this ever-expanding war,
it is worth visiting three of its lesser-known outposts.
The unlikely winner:
Djibouti
Even American generals
have to search for it on a map. It is a tiny, barren speck of sand and
lava rock on Africa's upper right-hand corner, a country with no tangible
economy, no arable land, no tourism, no reason to matter to anyone other
than its 640,000 inhabitants.
That is, until the
war on terrorism came along. During the two Iraq wars, the United States
used Djibouti's conveniently empty desert for training and war simulations.
The generals were impressed with what they found: a nearly vacant stretch
of land right across the Red Sea from the Persian Gulf nations, and
right next to the eastern African nations believed to be the "next
Afghanistan" for their burgeoning community of Islamist terrorists.
Even better, the
government of Djibouti was a lot more amenable to American soldiers
than was Saudi Arabia, the traditional U.S. base in the region. For
only a few million dollars, the Americans could do virtually anything
they wanted -- and Djibouti would do almost anything the Americans want.
In August, the United
States turned its temporary station at Djibouti's Camp Lemonier into
permanent headquarters for the war on terrorism, setting up elaborate
electronic listening posts and erecting a small city of concrete buildings.
More than 2,000 troops are now stationed there, with more expected to
arrive as the United States vacates Saudi Arabia. They will spend years,
maybe decades, keeping a close watch on the unstable territories of
Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan.
"If I was a
terrorist, I'd be going to places like Africa," Sergeant Jim Lewis
of the U.S. Army said recently at the Djibouti headquarters. "That's
why we're here. To seek them out, do whatever we can to find and kill
them."
But Djibouti is
typical of the strange new alliances the United States is willing to
enter -- and of the abuses it is willing to tolerate in order to achieve
its goals. This year, it wrote cheques for $31-million to the tiny country,
making it one of the larger recipients of U.S. aid. The cheques go to
the government of President Ismael Omar Guelleh, whose party won all
the seats in January's general election. Opposition leader Daher Ahed
Farah complained that his Democratic Renewal Party received 37 per cent
of the vote but failed to win a seat. For his criticisms, he was arrested
in March and thrown into Djibouti's notorious Gabode prison. Other opposition
leaders are forced to live in exile in France.
The State Department
officially says Djibouti's human-rights record has "serious problems,"
but the Bush administration seems to see this as a potential asset.
Last week, Djibouti expelled 100,000 residents, or 15 per cent of its
population, to neighbouring countries. One government official explained
that these foreign-born residents are "a threat to the peace and
security of the country . . . How do we know whether an individual is
a terrorist biding his time to cause harm, or not?" The official
denied reports that the United States had requested the expulsions.
The poor human-rights
record has not hurt Mr. Guelleh's relations with his allies. In late
January, shortly after the questionable election, he visited Washington
and was personally fêted by President George W. Bush, National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld
-- a level of access beyond the reach of leaders such as Prime Minister
Jean Chrétien.
The challenge: Indonesia
When a powerful
truck bomb destroyed the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta and killed six people
a month ago today, local police and military were quick to spring into
action. Within a week, they had arrested top officials in Jemaah Islamiyah,
the Indonesian branch of al-Qaeda.
And no wonder: They
not only had the direct help of U.S. Special Forces soldiers and CIA
agents who had flooded into the region after Sept. 11; they had just
received a special $50-million U.S. war on terrorism assistance package,
half of which went to the police force.
But the bomb's aftermath
reminded many people of another explosive event a dozen years earlier.
In 1991, Indonesian soldiers had opened fire on protesters demanding
independence for East Timor. More than 200 were slaughtered in an event
that shocked the world. The Cold War had created endless horrors in
Indonesia, where the Americans supported both the army and Islamist
separatists, whom it saw as useful opponents to Soviet-backed Communist
independence movements.
After the slaughter,
the United States began to back away, throwing support to democracy
movements throughout Southeast Asia. The one in Indonesia flourished
after the 1998 departure of strongman Suharto, and a year later, the
United States actually helped East Timor gain independence, using its
aid muscle to keep the Indonesian army on the sidelines.
So now, the people
of the world's most populous Islamic nation are not exactly happy to
see themselves becoming pawns in yet another global war. While the U.S.
aid and attention are welcomed by many, they threaten to set back the
democracy movement, turn the military back into lawless and dangerous
forces, and bring back the old Cold War dynamics.
In exchange for
participating in the war on terrorism, the Indonesian government has
said it wants U.S. help in fighting what it defines as "terrorist"
groups. Chief among these is the Free Aceh Movement, generally recognized
as a legitimate party calling for the independence of a former archipelago
nation now part of Indonesia. So far, Washington has refused to co-operate,
saying its list of terrorist groups includes only those that threaten
U.S. interests.
All across Southeast
Asia, this pattern is being repeated: fragile democracy movements, enjoying
U.S. support after years of Cold War suppression, are being menaced
by armies and governments emboldened by the war on terrorism. In Thailand,
in Malaysia and in the Philippines, the threat of Islamic terrorism
is real -- but so is the threat created by the war against it.
The paradox: Mauritania
To appreciate the
strange new ecology of this war fully, it's worth visiting its most
distant front, and taking a closer look at those mysterious Americans
hanging around that dusty capital on the western edge of the Sahara.
For 19 years, the
former French colony of Mauritania has been ruled by a military strongman
named Maaouyah Ould Sid Ahmed Taya, in what his partisans describe as
a democracy, one that opposition parties accuse of bloodily repressing
political dissent.
Until 2001, this
was of no interest at all to the United States or any other English-speaking
country. The war on terrorism has changed everything. In a nation with
a per-capita income of a dollar a day, the prospect of becoming a foreign
client is hard to resist. When the United States and its allies drove
al-Qaeda and its supporters out of such northern African nations as
Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia shortly after Sept. 11 (with the help of
foreign-aid dollars, secret military campaigns and a new willingness
to overlook the countries' abuses), the Mauritanians saw an opportunity.
"We acted because
it was obvious to us that this was the thing to do," Mohamedou
Ould Michel, the Mauritanian ambassador to the United States, told the
Washington Times recently. "In a world situation in which one nation
is dominant, it serves the interest of other nations to take this into
account."
The United States
suspected al-Qaeda cells had moved south into the ancient trade routes
that span the Sahara from Sudan to Mauritania. This isn't at all certain
-- even senior Pentagon and CIA officials have said they don't really
know. But Mr. Taya, whose military regime faces a popular Saudi-backed
opposition in elections scheduled this fall, was quick to claim that
his country was under threat.
Mauritania has certainly
benefited. It received a large share of a $100-million (U.S.) military
aid package for friendly West African nations this summer. Starting
this month, it will become the prime beneficiary of the Pan-Sahelian
Initiative, in which U.S. military advisers provide weapons, vehicles
and extensive military training to special terror-fighting squads in
Mali, Niger, Chad and Mauritania.
In exchange for
this largesse, it has embraced the Americans, acknowledged Israel's
existence, and cracked down hard on its Islamist opposition parties,
often with U.S. help. Those parties, whose leaders have been driven
into exile in Europe, argue that there never was any al-Qaeda link;
rather, they say, Mr. Taya has used the imprimatur of terrorism to ban
the opposition and has even tortured some leaders to death in prison
-- with full U.S. support.
His co-operation
with Washington has yielded the Mauritanian leader even greater fruit.
In the predawn hours of June 8, a group of Islamists in the military
staged a violent coup d'état, driving tanks into the capital
and mounting a two-day gun battle. But in the end the uprising was put
down, reportedly with help from the leader's new Western allies.
The Americans tend
to view this as a victory. Most observers are frankly amazed at how
much support a few million dollars bought. "A little bit of money
sure goes a long way out there," laughs Steven Simon, a former
senior director of the U.S. National Security Council who now provides
private consulting to the Pentagon with the RAND Corporation.
Beyond the possibility
of a vaporous enemy, these dubious new allegiances pose another threat,
Mr. Simon noted. What if the United States, in its zeal to eliminate
the tens of thousands of people trained by al-Qaeda around the world,
winds up providing aid and encouragement to unpopular regimes that are
doing things almost as bad?
"The risk here
is one of the big paradoxes of the war on terrorism," he said.
"One of the main grievances these terrorist groups are trying to
draw attention to is that the United States is consorting with evil
regimes that repress their people. But if the United States is going
to try to eliminate these groups, it will need the help and co-operation
of these regimes and therefore could give credence to those complaints."
Mr. Simon is among
a growing group of Washington hawks who worry that the war on terrorism
may indeed have become a little too much like World War Four -- or,
worse, too much like the Cold War.
"Look at the
similarities: Here we have a globalized organization that was competing
for hearts and minds with the rest of the world -- like the Cold War,
the battle is being fought all over the place. And one mistake of the
Cold War was that the U.S. came to think that you have to fight the
enemy everywhere. That's how we wound up in Vietnam, which was a terrible
mistake in every sense. We seem to be having a very similar situation
here, and making the same mistake, where you end up stuck in one place.
I'm concerned that that's happened in Iraq, and that it could happen
elsewhere."
The Cold War at
least had a tangible enemy to negotiate with. "The difference is
that here, the enemy cannot be deterred in the same way," Mr. Simon
said. Unlike the spectre of a nuclear conflict, "there's no mutually
assured destruction."
World War Four,
if that is going to be its name, had a firm and definite beginning,
when the jetliner attacks shocked the United States back into an international
role two years ago. But there is no chance that it will have a firm
and definite end. There will be no V-T day.
"Since al-Qaeda
is not an army, but an ideological, transnational movement, there is
no enemy military force physically to defeat," said Bruce Hoffman,
a Washington-based terrorism expert and military consultant. "In
fact, our enemies have defined this conflict, from their perspective,
as a war of attrition designed eventually to wear down our resolve and
will to resist."
We have become used
to a "war" being something that lasts a few months at most,
possibly only days. This one could last a lifetime -- and there is no
question, given the enormous shifts in manpower and geographic focus,
that the United States is preparing for just that. "Our enemies
see this conflict as an epic struggle that will last years, if not decades,"
Mr. Hoffman said. "The challenge therefore for the U.S. and other
countries enmeshed in this conflict is to maintain focus, and not to
become complacent about security or our prowess."
For the harried
commanders in Washington, that will indeed be the challenge. For the
rest of the world, the far more difficult challenge will be understanding
what is really going on in this lifelong, worldwide conflict -- what
is right and what is wrong in this morally and strategically fraught
new world.
Doug Saunders writes
on inter- national affairs for The Globe and Mail.
A litany of terror
2001
Sept. 11: Nineteen
members of al-Qaeda hijack four jetliners and crash three into the World
Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, killing more than 3,000 people.
Sept. 13: Osama
bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization named as prime suspect in attacks.
Sept. 19: U.S. forces
begin deployment to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the Persian Gulf and Diego
Garcia.
Sept. 25: President
George W. Bush supports Russia's claims that Chechen separatists are
related to al-Qaeda network.
Oct. 7: United States
begins air strikes on Afghanistan.
Oct. 17: United
States expands aid to Pakistan to $100-million in exchange for co-operation
in war.
Nov. 10: Mr. Bush
declares a global war against terrorism in address to United Nations
General Assembly, says "every nation has a stake in this cause."
Dec. 2: Osama bin
Laden believed to have escaped to Pakistan.
Dec. 11: United
States confirms that 100 Special Forces soldiers are in Somalia fighting
terrorism.
Dec. 22: Richard
Reid, an Englishman later found to have ties to an al-Qaeda cell, tries
to ignite explosives in his shoe on a flight from Paris to Miami. He
is arrested. Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announces
plans to transport terror suspects to U.S. naval base in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, and Mohammed Karzai becomes new Afghan leader.
2002
Jan. 7: Singapore
announces that 15 arrested suspects with possible links to al-Qaeda
had plans to blow up "very high-significance targets, embassies,
some of our military bases."
Jan. 16: U.S. troops
arrive in the southern Philippines to establish a counter-terrorism
training camp for Filipino soldiers.
Jan. 29: Mr. Bush
brands Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea, part of an "axis
of evil" armed with weapons of mass destruction and supporting
terrorism.
Jan. 31Journalist
Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan, by a group demanding
release of Guantanamo detainees.
Feb. 4: Mr. Bush's
budget proposes to increase defence spending by $48-billion.
Feb. 15: United
States agrees to deploy Special Forces in Yemen to hunt down terror
suspects.
Feb. 22: Pakistani
authorities announce that Mr. Pearl has been killed.
Feb. 27: United
States sends troops and weapons, including 10 attack helicopters, to
Republic of Georgia to train and aid local forces in fighting Islamic
terrorism.
March 21: A car
bomb explodes outside the U.S. embassy in Lima, killing nine people.
Peruvian Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliosi says, "There's
no doubt this is connected to the events of Sept. 11 and the presence
of President Bush."
March 30: Pakistani
authorities, aided by CIA and FBI agents, capture 35 terror suspects
during a raid in Faisalabad and Lahore, including Abu Zubaida, a top
al-Qaeda official.
April 11: Al-Qaeda
-linked agents attack a synagogue in Tunisia, killing 15 and injuring
20.
April 12: An Ethiopian
court sentences five members of al-Itihad al-Islamiya, a Somali fundamentalist
Islamic group believed linked to al-Qaeda, to death for bombing attacks
that killed 27 civilians in the past decade.
May 1: U.S. troops
arrive in Georgia to begin training local forces in anti-terrorism tactics,
with a budget of $64-million.
May 21: The State
Department's annual report identifies Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya,
Cuba, Sudan and Syria as governments that continue to support international
terrorist groups.
June 10: U.S. officials
reveal that Moroccan police have arrested three men from Saudi Arabia
who allegedly planned to attack U.S. and British warships in the Strait
of Gibraltar.
June: Senior al-Qaeda
leader Omar al-Faruq is arrested by CIA in Jakarta. Under interrogation,
he reveals plot to blow up U.S. embassies in Asia.
June 13: A car bomb
explodes outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi, killing 12 people and
injuring 51 others.
June 28: Mr. Bush
authorizes $10-million in emergency military assistance for the Philippine
government to fight the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group.
Sept. 7: UN Human
Rights Chief Mary Robinson accuses some national governments of hiding
behind the war against terrorism to impinge upon civil liberties and
crush opposition parties.
Sept. 13: U.S. officials
arrest Yemeni members of an alleged al-Qaeda cell in Lackawanna, N.Y.
Sept. 15: U.S. steps
up Special Forces activities in Yemen as more al-Qaeda suspects are
found there.
Sept. 18: Control
over war on terrorism shifted to U.S. Special Operations Command in
Tampa, Fla., signalling a move to more covert forms of warfare around
the world.
Sept. 19: Islamic
nationalist groups in five southeastern Asian nations are said to have
joined forces in a coalition linked to al-Qaeda.
Oct. 12: Nightclub
bombing and other attacks in Bali, Indonesia, kill more than 200 people.
Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaeda -linked group, is believed responsible.
Nov. 2: A missile
fired by a U.S. Predator drone over Yemen kills at least one senior
al-Qaeda official riding in a vehicle. It is the first overt military
action outside Afghanistan.
Nov. 28: Sudan's
al Islamiya, which claims al-Qaeda links, bombs Israeli targets in Kenya,
killing 13.
2003
Jan. 14: In London,
a group of young Algerians affiliated with al-Qaeda are arrested and
found in possession of the poison Ricin.
Feb. 1: CIA and
FBI officials deny any terrorist links to Iraq, in contradiction of
White House claims.
Feb. 7: Nightclub
in Bogota is bombed, an act the Colombian government links to Islamic
terrorism. Officials use this to request U.S. funding for anti-terror
efforts.
Feb. 9: Saudi leaders
say they are planning for an era without a U.S. military presence in
their country, to begin soon.
Feb. 21: United
States plans to send 1,700 troops to Philippines to fight Islamic rebels
in south.
March 2: Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed, believed to be the master planner of the Sept. 11 attacks,
is arrested in Pakistan.
March 3: American
anti-terrorist military mission in Philippines suspended because of
laws banning foreign troops.
March 4: Bombing
in southern Philippines kills 21. Islamic separatist group blamed.
March 7: Five people
arrested in Spain on suspicion of having financed April, 2002, synagogue
attack in Tunisia.
March 19: United
States launches war against Iraq.
April 2: Bomb in
southern Philippines kills at least 15. Philippine authorities blame
al-Qaeda-linked Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
April 15: Indonesian
prosecutors indict radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir on charges of treason
and plotting to overthrow government and establish Islamic state.
April 29: United
States will withdraw all combat forces from Saudi Arabia by this summer,
ending military presence that began in 1991. Forces will be relocated
around Africa.
May 1: Mr. Bush
declares that the military phase of the Iraq war has ended.
May 12: A series
of car bombings against American targets in Saudi Arabia carried out
by an al-Qaeda team kills 30.
May 13: Russian
Premier Vladimir Putin says bombing in Chechnya that killed 55 is an
al-Qaeda operation run in parallel with Saudi bombings.
May 16: Five targets
in Morocco are hit by suicide bombers believed tied to al-Qaeda.
July 4: Pentagon
announces agreements with Sahara nations to build terror-fighting military
bases in Mali, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.
Aug. 6: Bombing
of Marriott hotel in Indonesia kills at least 10 people.
Aug. 14: Riduan
Isamuddin, 39, an Indonesian better known as Hambali, believed to be
the top al-Qaeda official in Southeast Asia, is arrested in Jakarta.
Aug. 19: UN headquarters
in Baghdad bombed by unknown groups.
Aug. 25: Saudi Arabia
agrees to work with United States on anti-terrorism task force for first
time.
Sept. 2: Leader
of Jemaah Islamiyah acquitted by Indonesian judge on most charges related
to Bali blast.
Where the action
is
What the United
States is doing, and where, in its secretive war on terror:
Southeast Asia:
Setting up bases in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, shifting
troops away from their old base in Japanese islands. Mission: To combat
Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda, such as Jemaah Islamiyah.
The Philippines:
Heavy Special Forces and CIA presence in the south, preparing to send
in thousands of additional troops to help Manila combat Islamic opposition
and terror groups.
Central Asia: Remote
steppe nations ruled by dubious governments, such as Uzbekistan, have
provided airstrips and intelligence in exchange for aid and arms, and
are home to Islamic groups tied to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Horn of Africa:
A major installation in tiny Djibouti allows the United States to operate
on a permanent basis in Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania, Somalia.
Chechnya and Georgia:
Military assistance and weapons are being provided to Russia, which
claims the former Soviet republics have rebel movements tied to al-Qaeda.
Sahara: Suspicion
that al-Qaeda may have sought refuge along ancient desert trade routes
when driven out of north Africa has prompted military aid and support
to Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad, perhaps sites of future bases.
South America: Thousands
of Saudi expats live in the remote jungle "tri-border region"
between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, where al-Qaeda is rumoured to
have training camps and to be receiving financial support from locals.
U.S. covert forces now in the area, and eyeing Arabs living on Margarita
Island, the tourist hot spot in Venezuela.
Pakistan and Afghanistan:
Still a major military focus, with al-Qaeda and Taliban forces active
in mountainous regions between the two countries. Considerable financial
and military aid goes to Pakistan, even though elements in its military
appear to back Islamists.
Iraq: Intelligence
officials never believed there were any substantial links between Saddam
Hussein's Baathist regime and al-Qaeda (which once declared it an enemy).
But now a terrorist presence seems to have emerged, fuelled by foreign
mujahedeen who have entered the country just to fight Americans.
© 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc