"The research suggests that U.S.
interests would be better served through a policy of offshore balancing.
Some scholars have taken issue with this approach, arguing that keeping
boots on the ground in South Asia is essential for U.S. national
security. Proponents of this strategy fail to realize how U.S. ground
forces often inadvertently produce more anti-American terrorists than
they kill. In 2000, before the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, there
were 20 suicide attacks around the world, and only one (against the USS
Cole) was directed against Americans. In the last 12 months, by
comparison, 300 suicide attacks have occurred, and over 270 were
anti-American. We simply must face the reality that, no matter how
well-intentioned, the current war on terror is not serving U.S.
interests."
It's the Occupation, Stupid
Extensive research into the causes of suicide
terrorism proves Islam isn't to blame -- the root of the problem is
foreign military occupations.
BY ROBERT A. PAPE | OCTOBER 18, 2010
Although no one wants to talk about it, 9/11 is still
hurting America. That terrible day inflicted a wound of public fear that
easily reopens with the smallest provocation, and it continues to bleed
the United States of money, lives, and goodwill around the world. Indeed,
America's response to its fear has, in turn, made Americans less safe and
has inspired more threats and attacks.
In the decade since 9/11, the United States has conquered and occupied
two large Muslim countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), compelled a huge
Muslim army to root out a terrorist sanctuary (Pakistan), deployed
thousands of Special Forces troops to numerous Muslim countries (Yemen,
Somalia, Sudan, etc.), imprisoned hundreds of Muslims without recourse,
and waged a massive war of ideas involving Muslim clerics to denounce
violence and new institutions to bring Western norms to Muslim countries.
Yet Americans still seem strangely mystified as to why some Muslims might
be angry about this situation.
In a narrow sense, America is safer today than on 9/11. There has not
been another attack on the same scale. U.S. defenses regarding
immigration controls, airport security, and the disruption of potentially
devastating domestic plots have all improved.
But in a broader sense, America has become perilously unsafe. Each month,
there are more suicide terrorists trying to kill Americans and their
allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Muslim countries than in all the
years before 2001 combined. From 1980 to 2003, there were 343
suicide attacks around the world, and at most 10 percent were
anti-American inspired. Since 2004, there have been more than 2,000, over
91 percent against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other
countries.
Yes, these attacks are overseas and mostly focused on military and
diplomatic targets. So too, however, were the anti-American suicide
attacks before 2001. It is important to remember that the 1995 and 1996
bombings of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the 1998 bombings of the U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in
Yemen were the crucial dots that showed the threat was rising prior to
9/11. Today, such dots are occurring by the dozens every month. So why is
nobody connecting them?
U.S. military policies have not stopped the rising wave of extremism in
the Muslim world. The reason has not been lack of effort, or lack of
bipartisan support for aggressive military policies, or lack of funding,
or lack of genuine patriotism.
No. Something else is creating the mismatch between America's effort and
the results.
For nearly a decade, Americans have been waging a long war against
terrorism without much serious public debate about what is truly
motivating terrorists to kill them. In the immediate aftermath of the
9/11 attacks, this was perfectly explicable -- the need to destroy al
Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan was too urgent to await sober analyses of
root causes.
But, the absence of public debate did not stop the great need to know or,
perhaps better to say, to "understand" the events of that
terrible day. In the years before 9/11, few Americans gave much thought
to what drives terrorism -- a subject long relegated to the fringes of
the media, government, and universities. And few were willing to wait for
new studies, the collection of facts, and the dispassionate assessment of
alternative causes. Terrorism produces fear and anger, and these emotions
are not patient.
A simple narrative was readily available, and a powerful conventional
wisdom began to exert its grip. Because the 9/11 hijackers were all
Muslims, it was easy to presume that Islamic fundamentalism was the
central motivating force driving the 19 hijackers to kill themselves in
order to kill Americans. Within weeks after the 9/11 attacks, surveys of
American attitudes show that this presumption was fast congealing into a
hard reality in the public mind. Americans immediately wondered,
"Why do they hate us?" and almost as immediately came to the
conclusion that it was because of "who we are, not what we do."
As President George W. Bush said in his first address to Congress after
the 9/11 attacks: "They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion,
our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with
each other."
Thus was unleashed the "war on terror."
The narrative of Islamic fundamentalism did more than explain why America
was attacked and encourage war against Iraq. It also pointed toward a
simple, grand solution. If Islamic fundamentalism was driving the threat
and if its roots grew from the culture of the Arab world, then America
had a clear mission: To transform Arab societies -- with Western
political institutions and social norms as the ultimate antidote to the
virus of Islamic extremism.
This narrative had a powerful effect on support for the invasion of Iraq.
Opinion polls show that for years before the invasion, more than 90
percent of the U.S. public believed that Saddam Hussein was harboring
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But this belief alone was not enough
to push significant numbers to support war.
What really changed after 9/11 was the fear that anti-American Muslims
desperately wanted to kill Americans and so any risk that such extremists
would get weapons of mass destruction suddenly seemed too great. Although
few Americans feared Islam before 9/11, by the spring of 2003, a near
majority -- 49 percent -- strongly perceived that half or more of the
world's 1.4 billion Muslims were deeply anti-American, and a similar
fraction also believed that Islam itself promoted violence. No wonder
there was little demand by congressional committees or the public at
large for a detailed review of intelligence on Iraq's WMD prior to the
invasion.
The goal of transforming Arab societies into true Western democracies had
powerful effects on U.S. commitments to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Constitutions had to be written; elections held; national armies built;
entire economies restructured. Traditional barriers against women had to
be torn down. Most important, all these changes also required domestic
security, which meant maintaining approximately 150,000 U.S. and
coalition ground troops in Iraq for many years and increasing the number
of U.S. and Western troops in Afghanistan each year from 2003 on.
Put differently, adopting the goal of transforming Muslim countries is
what created the long-term military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yes, the United States would almost surely have sought to create a stable
order after toppling the regimes in these countries in any case. However,
in both, America's plans quickly went far beyond merely changing leaders
or ruling parties; only by creating Western-style democracies in the
Muslim world could Americans defeat terrorism once and for all.
There's just one problem: We now know that this narrative is not true.
New research provides strong evidence that suicide terrorism such as that
of 9/11 is particularly sensitive to foreign military occupation, and not
Islamic fundamentalism or any ideology independent of this crucial
circumstance. Although this pattern began to emerge in the 1980s and
1990s, a wealth of new data presents a powerful picture.
More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign
occupation, according to
extensive research that we conducted at the University of Chicago's
Project on Security and Terrorism, where we examined every one of the
over 2,200 suicide attacks across the world from 1980 to the present day.
As the United States has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, which have a
combined population of about 60 million, total suicide attacks worldwide
have risen dramatically -- from about 300 from 1980 to 2003, to 1,800
from 2004 to 2009. Further, over 90 percent of suicide attacks worldwide
are now anti-American. The vast majority of suicide terrorists hail from
the local region threatened by foreign troops, which is why 90 percent of
suicide attackers in Afghanistan are Afghans.
Israelis have their own narrative about terrorism, which holds that Arab
fanatics seek to destroy the Jewish state because of what it is, not what
it does. But since Israel withdrew its army from Lebanon in May 2000,
there has not been a single Lebanese suicide attack. Similarly, since
Israel withdrew from Gaza and large parts of the West Bank, Palestinian
suicide attacks are down over 90 percent.
Some have disputed the causal link between foreign occupation and suicide
terrorism, pointing out that some occupations by foreign powers have not
resulted in suicide bombings -- for example, critics often cite
post-World War II Japan and Germany. Our research provides sufficient
evidence to address these criticisms by outlining the two factors that
determine the likelihood of suicide terrorism being employed against an
occupying force.
The first factor is social distance between the occupier and occupied.
The wider the social distance, the more the occupied community may fear
losing its way of life. Although other differences may matter, research
shows that resistance to occupations is especially likely to escalate to
suicide terrorism when there is a difference between the predominant
religion of the occupier and the predominant religion of the occupied.
Religious difference matters not because some religions are predisposed
to suicide attacks. Indeed, there are religious differences even in
purely secular suicide attack campaigns, such as the LTTE (Hindu) against
the Sinhalese (Buddhists).
Rather, religious difference matters because it enables terrorist leaders
to claim that the occupier is motivated by a religious agenda that can
scare both secular and religious members of a local community -- this is
why Osama bin Laden never misses an opportunity to describe U.S.
occupiers as "crusaders" motivated by a Christian agenda to
convert Muslims, steal their resources, and change the local population's
way of life.
The second factor is prior rebellion. Suicide terrorism is typically a
strategy of last resort, often used by weak actors when other,
non-suicidal methods of resistance to occupation fail. This is why we see
suicide attack campaigns so often evolve from ordinary terrorist or
guerrilla campaigns, as in the cases of Israel and Palestine, the Kurdish
rebellion in Turkey, or the LTTE in Sri Lanka.
One of the most important findings from our research is that empowering
local groups can reduce suicide terrorism. In Iraq, the surge's success
was not the result of increased U.S. military control of Anbar province,
but the empowerment of Sunni tribes, commonly called the Anbar Awakening,
which enabled Iraqis to provide for their own security. On the other
hand, taking power away from local groups can escalate suicide terrorism.
In Afghanistan, U.S. and Western forces began to exert more control over
the country's Pashtun regions starting in early 2006, and suicide attacks
dramatically escalated from this point on.
The research suggests that U.S. interests would be better served through
a policy of offshore balancing. Some scholars have taken issue with this
approach, arguing that keeping boots on the ground in South Asia is
essential for U.S. national security. Proponents of this strategy fail to
realize how U.S. ground forces often inadvertently produce more
anti-American terrorists than they kill. In 2000, before the occupations
of Iraq and Afghanistan, there were 20 suicide attacks around the world,
and only one (against the USS Cole) was directed against Americans. In
the last 12 months, by comparison, 300 suicide attacks have occurred, and
over 270 were anti-American. We simply must face the reality that, no
matter how well-intentioned, the current war on terror is not serving
U.S. interests.
The United States has been great in large part because it respects
understanding and discussion of important ideas and concepts, and because
it is free to change course. Intelligent decisions require putting all
the facts before us and considering new approaches. The first step is
recognizing that occupations in the Muslim world don't make Americans any
safer -- in fact, they are at the heart of the problem.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/18/it_s_the_occupation_stupid?page=full
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