How
The War On Terror Made
The World A More Terrifying Place
By Kim Sengupta &
Patrick Cockburn
01 March, 2007
The
Independent
Innocent
people across the world are now paying the price of the "Iraq effect",
with the loss of hundreds of lives directly linked to the invasion and
occupation by American and British forces.
An authoritative US study
of terrorist attacks after the invasion in 2003 contradicts the repeated
denials of George Bush and Tony Blair that the war is not to blame for
an upsurge in fundamentalist violence worldwide. The research is said
to be the first to attempt to measure the "Iraq effect" on
global terrorism. It found that the number killed in jihadist attacks
around the world has risen dramatically since the Iraq war began in
March 2003. The study compared the period between 11 September 2001
and the invasion of Iraq with the period since the invasion. The count
- excluding the Arab-Israel conflict - shows the number of deaths due
to terrorism rose from 729 to 5,420. As well as strikes in Europe, attacks
have also increased in Chechnya and Kashmir since the invasion. The
research was carried out by the Centre on Law and Security at the NYU
Foundation for Mother Jones magazine.
Iraq was the catalyst for
a ferocious fundamentalist backlash, according to the study, which says
that the number of those killed by Islamists within Iraq rose from seven
to 3,122. Afghanistan, invaded by US and British forces in direct response
to the September 11 attacks, saw a rise from very few before 2003 to
802 since then. In the Chechen conflict, the toll rose from 234 to 497.
In the Kashmir region, as well as India and Pakistan, the total rose
from 182 to 489, and in Europe from none to 297.
Two years after declaring
"mission accomplished" in Iraq President Bush insisted: "If
we were not fighting and destroying the enemy in Iraq, they would not
be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world
and within our borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans
in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people."
Mr Blair has also maintained
that the Iraq war has not been responsible for Muslim fundamentalist
attacks such as the 7/7 London bombings which killed 52 people. "Iraq,
the region and the wider world is a safer place without Saddam [Hussein],"
Mr Blair declared in July 2004. Announcing the deployment of 1,400 extra
troops to Afghanistan earlier this week - raising the British force
level in the country above that in Iraq - the Prime Minister steadfastly
denied accusations by MPs that there was any link between the Iraq war
an unravelling of security elsewhere.
Last month John Negroponte,
the Director of National Intelligence in Washington, said he was "not
certain" that the Iraq war had been a recruiting factor for al-Qa'ida
and insisted: "I wouldn't say that there has been a widespread
growth in Islamic extremism beyond Iraq, I really wouldn't."
Yet the report points out
that the US administration's own National Intelligence Estimate on "Trends
in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" - partially
declassified last October - stated that " the Iraq war has become
the 'cause célèbre' for jihadists ... and is shaping a
new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."
The new study, by Peter Bergen
and Paul Cruickshank, argues that, on the contrary, "the Iraq conflict
has greatly increased the spread of al-Qa'ida ideological virus, as
shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years
from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea.
"Our study shows that
the Iraq war has generated a stunning increase in the yearly rate of
fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional
terrorist attacks and civilian lives lost. Even when terrorism in Iraq
and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world
have increased by more than one third."
In trying to gauge the "Iraq
effect", the authors had focused on the rate of terrorist attacks
in two periods - from September 2001 to 30 March 2003 (the day of the
Iraq invasion) and 21 March 2003 to 30 September 2006. The research
has been based on the MIPT-RAND Terrorism database.
The report's assertion that
the Iraq invasion has had a far greater impact in radicalising Muslims
is widely backed security personnel in the UK. Senior anti-terrorist
officials told The Independent that the attack on Iraq, and the now-discredited
claims by the US and British governments about Saddam Hussein's weapons
of mass destruction, had led to far more young Muslims engaging in extremist
activity than the invasion of Afghanistan two years previously.
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller,
head of the Secret Service (MI5) said recently: "In Iraq attacks
are regularly videoed and the footage is downloaded into the internet.
"Chillingly, we see
the results here. Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers.
The threat is serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with us for
a generation."
In Afghanistan the most active
of the Taliban commanders, Mullah Dadullah, acknowledged how the Iraq
war has influenced the struggle in Afghanistan.
"We give and take with
the mujahedin in Afghanistan", he said. The most striking example
of this has been the dramatic rise in suicide bombings in Afghanistan,
a phenomenon not seen through the 10 years of war with the Russians
in the 1980s.
The effect of Iraq on various
jihadist conflicts has been influenced according to a number of factors,
said the report. Countries with troops in Iraq, geographical proximity
to the country, the empathy felt for the Iraqis and the exchange of
information between Islamist groups. "This may explain why jihadist
groups in Europe, Arab countries, and Afghanistan were more affected
by the Iraq war than other regions", it said.
Russia, like the US, has
used the language of the "war on terror" in its actions in
Chechnya, and al-Qa'ida and their associates have entrenched themselves
in the border areas of Pakistan from where they have mounted attacks
in Kashmir, Pakistan and India.
Statistics for the Arab-Israel
conflict also show an increase, but the methodology is disputed in the
case of Palestinian attacks in the occupied territories and settler
attacks on Palestinians.
* The US is joining the Iraqi
government in a diplomatic initiative inviting Iran and Syria to a "neighbours
meeting" on stabilising Iraq, the Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice said yesterday. The move reflects a change of approach by the Bush
administration, which previously had resisted calls to include Iran
and Syria in such talks.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited