WHEN America struck back at Al Qaeda nearly a decade ago, few disputed its right to seek vengeance for the 9/11 attacks. But in retrospect, perhaps it ought to have heeded that old saying: ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’.
At the time, I supported Washington’s resolve to rid the world of the scourge of Al Qaeda. And if it could simultaneously throw out the barbaric Taliban who had caused so much suffering among ordinary Afghans, so much the better.
Even though Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar both escaped, it seemed at the time that their organisations had suffered such massive damage that they no longer represented a serious threat. But then something odd happened in Washington: Bush and his neo-con cabal decided to invade Iraq.
This needless war not only diverted American focus and resources from the real front, but also re-energised the jihadi movement. Thousands of young Muslims flocked to the green banner of Islam, and American popularity sank to new lows.
Much has been written about how America and the West have changed since 9/11. Terrorist attacks from Bali to London have caused an enormous increase in security measures. Hundreds of billions have been spent in fighting the ‘war on terror’.
Inevitably, these steps have resulted in a steady erosion of civil rights.
But what has this decade meant for the Muslim world? In real terms, we have suffered far more from the depredations of the Islamists than the West. Pakistan, in particular, has been badly battered: not so much for its role as America’s ally, but for its own ambivalence towards extremism.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world, too, terrorists have struck at governments they see as secular and/or pro-America. Ordinary people have borne the brunt of jihadi terrorism as these killers have gone for soft targets in markets, schools and playing fields. Muslims have suffered in other ways, too. As extremists step up their attacks and rhetoric against the West, Islamophobia has increased. Visa restrictions have been tightened, and students, businessmen and tourists have been affected. Western tourists in Muslim countries, once a source of income to ordinary people and governments, have dwindled in numbers. And as western businessmen are understandably nervous about coming to our shores, investments and export orders have also been badly hit.
Muslim immigrants in the West have perhaps been the worst affected by 9/11 and its fallout. Their position has been made more precarious by the militancy of young radicals born and brought up in the countries their parents and grandparents migrated to. The entire community is now viewed with suspicion by both security services and the majority of ordinary people.
At the workplace and on the streets, Muslim men sporting long beards and women wearing all-enveloping burkas are seen as ungrateful immigrants who despise the West and its culture, and yet enjoy the benefits available to all citizens. The gulf between the host community and Muslim migrants is wider than ever.
Students seeking to study in western universities now find it harder than ever to get visas. Earlier, many of them stayed on to work, and often settled in countries that were usually lenient in such cases. No longer. Now, it is very difficult for young people to crack the barriers being erected between the West and the Muslim world.
Given these setbacks, one would have thought that Muslim countries would be vociferous in their condemnation of jihadi terrorists. This is not obvious, judging from opinion polls: while most do condemn extremism, their criticism pales before their anti-American sentiments.
And it is this ambivalence that provides extremism with oxygen. Even today, 10 years after 9/11, millions of Muslims still doubt that those fateful attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda. A couple of days ago, I participated in a panel discussion on the Voice of America, and was amazed by the conspiracy theories trotted out by callers.
Another thing the events of 9/11 did was to make our state of denial a permanent feature of our worldview. Refusing to face reality, we are forever seeking to discover some hidden hand instead of accepting the obvious explanation, and then doing something about it.
Once we transfer the blame to America, the subtext becomes: what can we do against a superpower? But if we admitted that the cause of the problem lies much closer to home, then we would have to work to solve it. This is something we are not prepared to do. By blaming terror attacks on Blackwater and Xe, for example, we refuse to acknowledge that the threat is entirely homegrown.
When Osama bin Laden was plotting the 9/11 attacks, he had hoped that America would behave exactly as it did. By getting bogged down in Afghanistan, it has been forced to fight a land war on unfavourable terrain against a tough and pitiless foe.
Iraq, of course, was a huge bonus for the jihadis. But beyond his war on America, Bin Laden probably did not consider the effect his actions would have on the Muslim world. Had he thought about it, he would have rationalised it as collateral damage.
In any conflict, there are winners and losers. While Bin Laden might be feeding the fish in the Arabian Sea, the fact is that 9/11 changed the world in ways he could never have foreseen. While he certainly did not achieve his goal of driving the Americans out of the Muslim world, he has nevertheless forced them into spending hundreds of billions, losing thousands of lives, and causing a severe erosion in their democratic values.
This last decade has witnessed a discernible decline in American power. The huge cost of fighting two distant wars, combined with the collapse of the banking sector, has bled the American economy white. This period has also seen the rise of other power centres, principally China.
So while Americans might draw some comfort from the death of their arch-enemy, revenge has come at an unacceptable cost.
A Pyrrhic victory is one in which the winner suffers as much as the loser and cannot savour his triumph.
Military historians of the Second World War think Hitler’s biggest mistake was to attack the Soviet Union, and this error probably cost him the war. Will future historians blame Bush for attacking Iraq, thereby losing the war against the jihadis?
irfan.husain@gmail.com
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