War View: 'It's like bombing Sicily to try to beat the Mafia'

Ghada Karmi

Ghada Karmi, an academic and leader of the UK's Palestinian Community Association, says she thinks the US and UK should have thought longer before taking their military action.

Just as the perpetrators of the New York bombings in September perhaps intended, the Americans have fallen into the worst of traps.

They have walked into the quagmire of Afghanistan's notoriously treacherous geographic and political terrain. Like the proverbial bull in the china shop, the US army is crashing over delicately balanced ethnic, tribal and cross-border relationships which, though unsustainable in the long term, have maintained a sort of modus vivendi.

It is of course understandable that the world's major superpower, having been so viciously attacked, could not have stood by and done nothing. But the question was then as it is now, 12 days into the bombing: do what and to whom? And how much thought went into the consequences of whatever US retaliation was finally decided on?

What of Bin Laden?

It is becoming disturbingly clear that no exit strategy for this enterprise exists beyond a recently advocated post-Taleban plan to place Afghanistan under UN trusteeship with an Islamic peacekeeping force.

If this happens, it may be good for the country but leaves the US with the same problem, namely, what of Bin Laden and his terror network?

And if he were caught, what to do with him? Dead, he would become an instant martyr to his followers; captured alive, many Muslims would see him as a "prisoner of conscience", deprived of a fair hearing in the West.

The disproportionate military punishment visited on a poor Islamic country with the support of an unstable and ill-assorted coalition of states is no way to fight a war on "terrorism".

Exodus

The war on Afghanistan is indeed having an effect, not on terrorism - its total irrelevance in this context is exemplified in the mysterious anthrax attack which is currently afflicting America - but in other areas.

The hapless Afghan people are the worst affected. The refugee exodus from the country began even before US bombing began. Food supplies to the population have had to be halted because of the military action.

British aid agencies have asked for the attacks to stop, to enable food supplies to reach the population. If not, they warn that seven million Afghans may die of starvation and cold in the next few months.

As these attacks continue, Muslims worldwide are increasingly disaffected, weakening the US-built coalition and threatening the stability of regimes in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Even European states are less than happy about the current campaign. If the anti-terrorism coalition falters, will the US go it alone? And who will foot the ultimate bill for this war, the US having lost an estimated £120 billion and Britain £6 billion since the terrorist bombings?

Security services

Before opening this Pandora's box, the US should have waited longer and planned differently.

Countering terrorism is a job for civilian security services, intelligence gathering, tackling money-laundering, freezing assets and policing borders. Throwing bombs at it is like trying to defeat the Mafia by attacking Sicily.

This is an unprecedented situation and it requires an unconventional response. The US needs to show imagination and mature statesmanship in handling it. That means an immediate end to the bombing, and a close working liaison with the UN.

A world convention on terrorism would be a good start to discuss its definition and causes. Those states which harbour terrorists should explain why they do so in an atmosphere of dialogue and constructiveness.

The conflicts which perpetuate anti-Western resentment - for example, the Arab-Israeli dispute - should be seriously dealt with. Finally, Western states need to set up dynamic economic strategies for relieving poverty and disadvantage in the developing world unlike the restrictive and punitive policies currently on offer.

Such an approach takes as its basis the fact that "Islamic" terrorism did not arise in a vacuum but sprang from a soil of discontent and deprivation and flourished in a climate of post-colonialist humiliation, which the US and its Western partners did much to create.

Changing the soil and the climate and thus depriving terrorism of its raison d'être is surely a far more rational solution than trying to bomb it out of existence.