bitterlemons-international.org - Middle East Roundtable

Edition 33 Volume 2 - August 26, 2024

The 9/11 report and US Middle East strategy

No regime change talk here. This is no grand strategy for transformation of the Middle East.

No theme is repeated and cited more often as the fundamental source of Arab and Muslim anger than the occupation of Palestine and the United States' pathetic response.

• Difficult times ahead - Rami Khouri

By focusing primarily on what the US can do to improve domestic security the commission report ends up addressing the symptoms rather than the causes.

• Little impact - Matthew Levitt

Many of the near term goals prioritized in the report are hard to reconcile with its long-term objectives.

A study in pragmatism
Uzi Arad

The 9/11 Commission Report is an impressive body of work. Submitted by a bi-partisan commission comprising ten distinguished Americans, chaired by Thomas Kean, and supported by a powerful staff of specialists directed by Philip Zelikow, it is the product of prodigious research, investigations and hearings. The voluminous final report totals 567 pages, complemented by a 26 page executive summary. The commission was mandated by law to investigate the "facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2024". The commission interpreted that mandate to be a sweeping one as it sought to explain how September 11 came to happen, why the United States was caught unprepared, and how such a tragedy could be avoided in the future.

Commensurate with this perception of its mandate, the commission provided a coherent explanatory narrative of the sequence of events culminating in September 11, drawing from it an equally sweeping array of findings and recommendations. Indeed, leading the recommendations is a list of action items grouped under the promising title "What to Do? A Global Strategy". However upon close reading it becomes clear that the report is basically a study in solid and rather cautious analysis, followed by carefully considered and balanced recommendations.

September 11 is described in the report as "an attack by 19 young Arabs acting at the behest of Islamist extremists". This calls for discussing the matter in its proper Arab and Islamic contexts. It is striking to note, therefore, that the report takes quite a narrow view of these contexts. Considering the wide-ranging public debate about root causes of September 11 and the multiple explanations provided in response to that pathetic question "why do they hate us", the report offers a limited yet straightforward definition of the nature of the enemy. It states that "The enemy is not just 'terrorism'. It is the threat posed specifically by Islamist terrorism, by bin Laden and others who draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within a minority of Islam that does not distinguish politics from religion, and distorts both. The enemy is not Islam, the great faith, but a perversion of Islam. The enemy goes beyond al Qaeda to include the radical ideological movements, inspired in part by al Qaeda, that have spawned other terrorist groups and violence."

Such a politically and diplomatically correct focus has the immediate effect of analytically restricting the range of the threat definition. For example, other manifestations of Arab and Islamic anti-American terrorist activities such as Lebanese Hizballah are hardly discussed at all, although in context and methods--such as the propensity for suicide attacks (an operational aspect of the threat largely ignored by the report)--they might have deserved closer scrutiny.

The narrow analytical focus adopted by the report extends into the discussion of al Qaeda infrastructural and state support. Much attention is given to Afghanistan and Pakistan; less to the Sudan, and studious care is invoked with regard to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Here, for example, is what the report recommends in its global strategy under the heading "Attack Terrorists and Their Organizations": "Root out sanctuaries. The US government should identify and prioritize actual or potential terrorist sanctuaries and have realistic country or regional strategies for each, utilizing every element of national power and reaching out to countries that can help us. Strengthen long-term US and international commitments to the future of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Confront problems with Saudi Arabia and build a relationship . . . that both sides can defend to their citizens and [that] includes a shared commitment to reform."

This, of course, is no grand strategy for transformation of the Middle East. The report's measured approach is even more pronounced in its second set of recommendations, under the heading "Prevent the Continued Growth of Islamist Terrorism". Following are the recommendations as they are phrased in deliberately fuzzy language: "Define the message and stand as an example of moral leadership in the world. To Muslim parents, terrorists like bin Laden have nothing to offer their children but visions of violence and death. America and its friends have the advantage--our vision can offer a better future. Where Muslim governments, even those who are friends, do not offer opportunity, respect the rule of law, or tolerate differences, then the United States needs to stand for a better future. Communicate and defend American ideals in the Islamic world through much stronger public diplomacy . . . . Our efforts should be as strong as they were in combating closed societies during the Cold War."

No regime change talk here, though it certainly implies a war of ideas offensive, possibly in the expectation of political change. A similar expectation of desirable consequences is to be found in recommendations that echo the Arab Human Development Report: "Offer an agenda of opportunity that includes support for public education and economic openness." The report's recommendations on how to fight Islamist terrorism suggest: "Develop a comprehensive coalition strategy . . . using a flexible contact group of leading coalition governments and fashioning a common coalition approach on issues like the treatment of captured terrorists", and "Expect less from trying to dry up terrorist money and more from following the money for intelligence, as a tool to hunt terrorists, understand their networks, and disrupt their operations." And, almost as if in passing, comes this all-important recommendation: "Devote a maximum effort to the parallel task of countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

The effort to strike a middle course between the bravura of those who advocate massive transformation of the Middle East through intensive diplomatic, political, economic and coercive interventions and those who see no point in such efforts, must have led the report's authors to the realization that much would still be needed by way of defensive strategies if the US is to protect itself from future terrorist attacks. Here too, however, the report's recommendations covering counter terrorism, intelligence and management seem to suggest half measures compared to those advocated by grand reformers or by the sheer magnitude of the tasks.

The cautious and calibrated tenor of the report should not, however, be construed as a shortcoming or a failure of the imagination of the kind the report's authors ascribe to those who were supposed to warn of and prevent September 11. Rather, it is perhaps the more realistic course they could propose. In their deliberations they may have judged that this is as much as the still traumatized American public, now engaged in war in the Middle East as a consequence of September 11, can take; that this is as much as the American system can manage. In this sense the report's findings and recommendations, including those aimed at the Middle East, though possibly not the most profound, penetrating or ambitious, seem quite pragmatic. As such they could be sketching the contours of the more plausible course of policies and actions the United States might choose to undertake.- Published 26/8/2004 (c) bitterlemons-international.org

Dr. Uzi Arad is head of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at Herzlia's Interdisciplinary Center. He served as foreign policy advisor to PM Netanyahu, and with the Israeli foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

Eyes wide shut
Akram Baker

With the completion and publication of the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission Report, the United States has succeeded brilliantly once again in opening its eyes wide shut. There is no other way to describe this impressive tome of self indulgent, technically-oriented analysis. The authors, stacked with extraordinary resumes, come out looking like doctors in an emergency room treating a patient just brought in suffering from a massive gunshot wound. Taking their time to carefully analyze the injuries of the patient, the ballistics of the bullet, our congressional MDs then proceed to prescribe a set of sutures to close the wound without cleaning inside. OK, these are really stunning, advanced, and meticulous dressings; but bandages nonetheless. While the 9/11 report makes notable attempts to address the reasons why 19 "Arab men" would catapult themselves and 3,000 other people to their fiery and tragic deaths, it completely fails to draw the right conclusions--either by design or default.

The report is neither a coherent and honest strategy on how to improve US foreign policy, nor does it delve deeply enough into the reasons why so many Arabs/Muslims are prepared to give their lives (and sacrifice others') in the fight against the US. If it were a manual for law enforcement agencies, taking things from a strictly security perspective, it would have been more acceptable. If the report had tried to courageously decipher the shortcomings of US policy in the Middle East, the authors could possibly have produced an historic and revolutionary document. At the end of the day, it is neither here nor there.

While dealing with well-proven and thoroughly documented deficiencies (even President Bush admitted as much in a recent speech) in the way the United States has coddled and supported Arab dictatorial and authoritarian regimes for the past 60 years, the 9/11 report failed to adequately take on the seriously-flawed US positions vis-a-vis the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In my extensive travels throughout the region, no theme is repeated and cited more often as the fundamental source of Arab and Muslim anger than the occupation of Palestine and the United States' pathetic response in the face of illegal and immoral Israeli policies. The double standards involved are truly mind-boggling. To this caustic mix, we can add the fiasco of Iraq and the Bush administration's rush to consolidate its military bases in the Arab gulf, regardless of international legitimacy and a substantial percentage of American public opinion. Therefore--regrettably--I don't think the 9/11 report will have much effect in curbing either terrorism or "Islamist terrorism", as it is called in the pages of the report.

What is interesting is how the publication of the report (and its subsequent translation and wide distribution in Arabic) will affect Palestinian national and Islamic movements like Fatah and Hamas. These organizations, with the notable exception of certain individuals, do not seem to have truly and honestly comprehended the profound meaning of 9/11 on the United States and its people. A large number of Palestinians continue to steadfastly refuse to see that suicide bombings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are easily equated with Osama bin Laden, the world's public enemy number one--like it or not. Anything even faintly smelling of bin Laden will be immediately and cruelly (often unfairly) fit into the absurd "war on terrorism" shoe. This has no positive influence on achieving just Palestinian aspirations to democratic statehood and freedom. Quite the opposite is true.

It is high time for the Palestinian political movement to realize that the best way to counter the absurd and counterproductive US policy toward Israel is to call its bluff. Take the 9/11 report, study it, analyze it, sift through it with a fine comb and then use Washington's own arguments to gain independence. In this way, the Palestinians could accomplish the desperately-needed reforms necessary to form and build a viable and healthy independent state (regardless of what Washington or Tel Aviv says) and neutralize the many hostile elements within the influential American political elite. The report eloquently calls for the United States to actively support "reform, freedom, democracy". Who can object to such lofty objectives? It would be prudent for the Palestinians and Arabs in general to ignore the blowhards in Washington and get down to doing what is right for them. Understand that America was/is rightly hurt and angered by the attacks of 9/11. What greater tribute to those innocents who died in Jerusalem, Rafah, Jenin, al-Falluja, and New York, could one think of than to take the tragedies that occur daily in the Middle East and turn them on the extremists, whether they happen to sit in Afghanistan, Tel Aviv, or Washington.- Published 26/8/2004 (c) bitterlemons-international.org

Akram Baker is an independent Palestinian political analyst. He is co-president of the Arab Western Summit of Skills, a platform for Arab professionals dedicated to reform and development in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

Difficult times ahead
Rami Khouri

The impact on the Middle East of the 9/11 Commission Report on the 2024 attacks against the United States is likely to continue the existing trends of the "war on terror": active unilateral Anglo-American warfare when deemed appropriate, heightened security cooperation and operations in the Middle East, stringent security measures within the United States that will further degrade American-Middle Eastern ties, and a very weak focus on underlying issues that breed anti-American sentiments and terrorism in the Middle East. This signals difficult times ahead for both the United States and the Middle East, and also for others in the world--to judge by the Madrid train attacks and other recent terror-related threats or arrests in Europe.

The limits of the report mirror the broad American approach to dealing with the 9/11 terror phenomenon, an approach that has scored some successes in recent years but also seems to have expanded the appeal and operating arenas of terrorists who target the US, Arabs, and others. The commission report, like US policy to date, includes a heavy focus on technical security, intelligence, and the military dimensions of the war against terror, while grossly neglecting the underlying multi-sectoral conditions that seem to spawn terrorists in the first place. Because of its persistent inability or unwillingness to come to grips with the deeper causes of terror, Washington pursues security-based policies that will certainly thwart most terror operations, but at the same time may spark a new wave of terrorists. The best example is how attacks against American and other targets have increased as a direct result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Neither the commission report nor US official policy--or the public at large, for that matter--have made any serious attempt since September 11, 2024 to understand the complex process by which otherwise decent young men from various Arab and Asian countries transform themselves into terrorists and suicide bombers, almost indiscriminately attacking targets in the US, Europe, Arab capitals and elsewhere. By focusing primarily on what the US can do to improve domestic security, develop better intelligence and preemptive capabilities, and protect itself against future attacks, the commission report ends up addressing the symptoms rather than the causes of terror. It grapples impressively with the supply side of terror, without trying to understand the demand side that is the real underlying problem.

This is not a mystery--but it is politically awkward for the United States and many ruling regimes in the Arab-Asian region. The 9/11 brand of terror that first emerged a decade ago emanates from a relatively clear, linear historical process that transformed the Afghani jihadist guerrillas and Arab-Asian Islamist domestic activists of the 1980s into the terrorists of the 1990s and beyond. The commission report only perfunctorily mentions the complex web of issues that drove this process. The most noteworthy include Arab domestic autocracy and corruption, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern lands, American-Israeli policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians, global double standards in implementing UN resolutions, an expedient and self-servingly hypocritical American policy of promoting democracy in some countries but not in Arab countries, economic stress and social disorientation at home, a cumulative sense of hopelessness and marginalization in one's own country, and anger against the aggressive, militaristic American posture in the Middle East after the fall of the Soviet Union--to mention only the most obvious.

Those wayward young men who have chosen the criminal route of terror are not primarily a function of an extremist religious ideology or a charismatic single leader such as Osama bin Laden. It took decades for their societies to generate within them the distortions, fears, resentments and anger that made them prime candidates for the Bin Ladenist recruiting machine. They reflect, in fact, the cumulative consequence of often-brutal policies practiced over decades by a range of parties--primarily by Arab and Asian regimes, Israel, and the United States.

By choosing to ignore the many reasons for why and how bin Ladenist terrorists emerged on the world scene, and why 9/11 happened, both the commission report and wider American society run the risk of pursuing policies that only feed the terrorist recruiting machines and perpetuate the terror threat. The worrying implication of the 9/11 commission report for the Middle East is that official Washington and Main Street USA both continue to focus primarily on how terror impacts America and how it can be prevented there, rather than exploring the deeper, more complex, local generators of terror in the Arab-Asian region, and also in the policy-making circles of Arab capitals, Israel and the United States.- Published 26/8/2004 (c) bitterlemons-international.org

Rami G. Khouri is the executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star.

Little impact
Matthew Levitt

The 9/11 Commission Report is a remarkable and important document. The product of a serious and professional staff that enjoyed unprecedented access to highly classified information, the report is rich in information and has already shaped much of the discourse over the upcoming US election.

To be sure, the report will have far-reaching implications--both in terms of specific policy issues and how the US government is structured to deal with these issues--long after the next president is elected and takes office. By the logic of its own analysis, the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission Report should have especially significant and practical implications for US policy toward the Middle East. That was certainly its intent. But in all likelihood, that will not be the case in either the near or even medium term. This is despite a plethora of sharp analysis of the region and several recommendations specific to it.

>From the outset, the report's analysis identifies the enemy not as "terrorism" or "Islam" but "Islamist terrorism," a perversion of Islam marketed by Osama bin Laden and others like him. The report recognizes the need not only to dismantle terror networks, but to defeat the ideology that supports them and, by extension, the economic and social ills that permeate the region and sustain this radical ideology. It calls for increased engagement and cooperation with Middle Eastern states; identifies political, economic and educational reform as critical to promoting tolerance and creating opportunities for legitimate political dissent; and cautions against the trend of "blindly" supporting "friendly" regimes that repress their own people and shun reform in an effort to retain exclusive control over the reigns of power.

Similarly, the report's recommendations include such action items as calling for broadening the nature of the US-Saudi relationship beyond oil and security and for fostering public education in the region that teaches "tolerance, the dignity and value of each individual, and respect for different beliefs." It highlights the lessons learned from what it understatedly terms America's "unsuccessful diplomacy" prior to 9/11, especially regarding its efforts to solicit the cooperation and assistance of the Taliban regime and the two countries that recognized and assisted it, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

Why, then, despite its decidedly Middle East focus, will the report's impact on US policy toward the region be muted? Because, unlike its detailed prescription for change within the US intelligence bureaucracy, the report's recommendations regarding policy toward the Middle East are broad and undefined. At the core of the problem is a conundrum the report itself highlights but never resolves: many of the near term (or tactical) goals prioritized in the report are hard to reconcile with its long term (or strategic) objectives.

How to promote "reform, freedom, democracy, and opportunity," for example, while at the same time strengthening the central authority of regimes deemed weak and susceptible of emerging as future safe havens for terrorists? The report wisely calls for economic reform and political openness, assessing that "backward economic policies and repressive political regimes slip into societies that are without hope, where ambition and passion have no constructive outlet." While strategically sound, the report also identifies the removal of terrorist sanctuaries as a paramount tactical objective but never prescribes a means of removing sanctuaries without empowering the very "repressive political regimes" it seeks to reform.

The practical implementation of the report's recommendations regarding the Middle East is equally vague. The report's call for change in the US-Saudi relationship, and praise for recent Saudi counter terrorism measures, is muffled by the commission staff's own conclusions in a recently released monograph that Saudis may still not have turned the corner. The staff's terror financing experts concluded that, ''We cannot underplay, however, the reluctance of the Saudi government to make the necessary changes between 9/11 and the late spring of 2024. It remains to be seen whether it has truly internalized its responsibility for the problem.'' Pressing the Saudis to keep up the tactical pressure on terrorist elements will likely trump all other items on the US-Saudi agenda for some time to come.

The case of Saudi Arabia is paradigmatic of the general challenges facing decision-makers interested in implementing the commission's public education and diplomacy recommendations. Defeating the radical ideology that has increased--not decreased--terrorist recruitment since 9/11 is absolutely critical. But how to accomplish this goal while reigning in the continued state sponsorship of terrorism by regimes like Iran and Syria remains unclear.

The report's greatest contribution toward shaping US policy on the Middle East may have more to do with the report itself than its recommendations for US policymakers. Domestically, the report has catapulted critical policy debates to the front burner, though the bigger conceptual and regional policy issues have largely been overshadowed by the debate over intelligence reform.

The report is slated to be translated into several languages, including Arabic, and distributed widely throughout the Middle East, much the way American diplomats used to hand out translations of the Declaration of Independence and Mark Twain in local dialects. Perhaps once people in the region are able to read the report for themselves, and see that speaking truth to power and providing avenues for legitimate political dissent and criticism is possible, they will be further motivated to seek such freedoms and opportunities themselves. Until then, and as long as the call for reform is seen as an American agenda, the "promotion of such messages will be limited in its effectiveness simply because we are its carriers."- Published 26/8/2004 (c) bitterlemons-international.org

Matthew Levitt is a senior fellow in terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of Exposing Hamas: Funding Terror Under the Cover of Charity (Yale University Press, forthcoming 2024).