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	The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived by David Clark, Derrick Jackson The Guardian / Boston Globe UK / USA   July 9, 2005   The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived, by David Clark. (The Guardian)   It must now be obvious, even to those who would like us to think otherwise, that the war on terror is failing. This is not to say that the terrorists are winning. Their prospects of constructing the medieval pan-Islamic caliphate of their fantasies are as negligible today as they were four years ago when they attacked America.   It is simply to point out that their ability to bring violence and destruction to our streets is as strong as ever and shows no sign of diminishing. We may capture the perpetrators of Thursday''''s bombings, but others will follow to take their place. Moreover, the actions of our leaders have made this more likely, not less. It''''s time for a rethink.   The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived from the start. Rooted in traditional strategic thought, with its need for fixed targets and an identifiable enemy, the post-9/11 response focused myopically on the problem of how and where to apply military power. Once the obvious and necessary task of tackling Bin Laden''''s presence in Afghanistan had been completed, those charged with prosecuting the war needed a new target to aim at.   In his book Against All Enemies, the former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke chronicles the inability of senior administration officials to grasp the nature of the threat directed against them. Even before 9/11 they were fixated with the notion that behind a successful terrorist network like al-Qaida must be state sponsorship; destroy the state, destroy the threat, ran the theory.   In this environment it was easy for the neoconservatives to win approval for their prefabricated plan to attack Iraq. But al-Qaida has never depended on state sponsorship, except in the wholly unintended sense that the US-funded campaign against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan brought its members together and gave them their first taste of jihad.   Indeed it is a mistake even to regard al-Qaida as an organization in the traditional sense of the term. At most it is now little more than an idea, fusing ideology with operational method, both of which can be accessed freely via the internet. It is quite meaningless to talk about destroying the "terrorist infrastructure", unless we propose to carpet bomb Microsoft. We have entered the era of do-it-yourself terrorism.   Bin Laden must be brought to justice, but he has become a strategic irrelevance in the struggle against terrorism. Wherever he is - on the run in the badlands of Waziristan or holed up in someone''''s cellar - he is not directing operations. He doesn''''t need to. He has provided the inspiration and example for a new generation of terrorists who have never been to his training camps in Afghanistan and whose only connection to al-Qaida is a shared desire to lash out at the west.   It should be clear by now that we cannot defeat this threat with conventional force alone, however necessary that may be in specific circumstances. Even good policing, as we have found to our cost, will have only limited effect in reducing its capacity to harm. The opposite response - negotiation - is equally futile. How can you negotiate with a phenomenon that is so elusive and diffuse? And even if you could, what prospect would there be of reaching a reasonable settlement?   An effective strategy can be developed, but it means turning our attention away from the terrorists and on to the conditions that allow them to recruit and operate. No sustained insurgency can exist in a vacuum. At a minimum, it requires communities where the environment is permissive enough for insurgents to blend in and organize without fear of betrayal. This does not mean that most members of those communities approve of what they are doing. It is enough that there should be a degree of alienation sufficient to create a presumption against cooperating with the authorities. We saw this in Northern Ireland.   From this point of view, it must be said that everything that has followed the fall of Kabul has been ruinous to the task of winning over moderate Muslim opinion and isolating the terrorists within their own communities. In Iraq we allowed America to rip up the rule book of counter-insurgency with a military adventure that was dishonestly conceived and incompetently executed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed by US troops uninterested in distinguishing between combatant and noncombatant, or even counting the dead. The hostility engendered has been so extreme that the CIA has been forced to conclude that Iraq may become a worse breeding ground for international terrorism that Afghanistan was. Bin Laden can hardly believe his luck.   The political dimensions of this problem mean that there can be no hope of defeating terrorism until we are ready to take legitimate Arab grievances seriously. We must start by acknowledging that their long history of engagement with the west is one that has left many Arabs feeling humiliated and used. There is more to this than finding a way of bringing the occupation of Iraq to an end. We cannot seriously claim to care for the rights of Arabs living in Iraq when it is obvious that we care so little for Arabs living in Palestine. The Palestinians need a viable state, but all the indications suggest that the Bush administration is preparing to bounce the Palestinians into accepting a truncated entity that will lack the basic characteristics of either viability or statehood. That must not be allowed to succeed.   At its inception post-9/11, the war on terror was shaped by the fact that it was American blood that had been shed. Having stood with America, we have a right to a greater say in how we tackle the terrorism menance. The current approach is failing and it''''s time for a change.   (David Clark is a former Labour government adviser).   July 8, 2005   The United States engages in its own war of propaganda, by Derrick Jackson. (Boston Globe)   To this day, there has been no major acknowledgement, let alone apology, by President Bush or Tony Blair for the massive amounts of carnage we created in a war waged over what turned out to be a lie, the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.   ''''We don''''t do body counts," said both General Tommy Franks, former Iraqi commander, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. When Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt was asked about the images of American soldiers killing innocent civilians on Arab television, Kimmitt said: ''''My solution is quite simple: Change the channel. Change the channel to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda. And that is lies."   The United States waged its own war of propaganda by refusing to conduct a legitimate, authoritative, honest accounting of the deaths of innocent civilians. As it urged people to change the channel, the Bush administration cut off all channels to finding out what we did to women, men, and children who were shopping, working, or leaving their mosques. In an invasion based on falsehoods, the truth of the many civilian deaths might have been too hard for Americans to take, and support for the war might have ended in the first few weeks.   The propaganda of an invasion with invisible innocents surely allowed Bush to seamlessly switch his stated reason from the unique horrors of WMD to liberating an oppressed people. It is a lot easier to tell the world you are their great liberator if you do not have to own up to the thousands of dead people who will never get the chance to vote in that free election. It sounds a little bit like people who say African-Americans should be thankful for slavery because they are no longer in Africa.   Worse, this denial of death, in a war that did not have to happen, is sure to fuel the very terrorism we say we will defeat. The innocents in the so-called war on terror are always ''''our" citizens or the citizens of our allies. The only innocent Iraqis are those killed by ''''insurgents."   This posturing of America as the great innocent, when everyone knows we have killed innocents ourselves, is likely only to make us look more like the devil in the eyes of a potential suicide bomber.
	A Continent's success stories go unreported by Bashir Goth / Niall FitzGerald Khaleej Times / International Herald Tribune Africa   8 July 2005   "How Africans see the Initiative to Help the Continent", by Bashir Goth. (Khaleej Times)   Good intentions to dislodge poverty's tight grip on Africa are welcome and must be well appreciated by every conscientious African who cares to see an end to the continent's long night of hunger, disease and grinding poverty.   In Africa we should salute all honest initiatives aimed at helping our neglected continent. We say Viva to Prime Minister Tony Blair's Commission for Africa, Chancellor Gordon Brown's relentless fight to bring as many countries as possible to the African aid's bandwagon, Bob Geldof's Live 8 and his army of world singers and musicians who enthralled the world in the name of mother Africa. We also take off our hats to the audience of millions who responded to the Live 8 call and poured out their pockets and their hearts to Crusade End of Poverty.   We do this because in Africa it is the language of singing, music and drumbeat that we understand more than any language. When we are hungry we sing, when we are sick we sing, when death descends on us we sing, when life smiles for us we sing. We always sing, beat the drums and dance. Music and singing are the secret of our existence. This is how we cheated extinction and annihilation. Even when the prime youth of Africa, the manpower of our continent were taken in chains across the Atlantic, they took their drum beats and their music in their hearts, in their heads and in their feet. This is why when the world sings in our name today, we understand the honesty of it and we sing with them.   In Africa, we also know that it is our singing and our music that soothes our nerves, drives away our blues and sends our hungry children to sleep. But our music and our singing bring no money. Now when we see music played, drums beaten and lyrics sang in our name to bring us money, we worry. Because we know money is evil at least in Africa. You see when our hungry children hear our music, and our singing and our lullabies they remember it is sleeping time and they go to bed, but if they learn that music means money, they would stay awake and wait for food. Because they know money buys food. But in Africa, money is like a snake's droppings, everyone hears about it but no one ever sees it.   We know it comes from the world to us as aid, as debt, as grants as charity, as food, as medicine. It comes from all over the world. But you know in Africa, our leaders taught us a long time ago that money is evil. They taught us it is the root cause of all wars, diseases and poverty. They said that if money came to our kraals and our abodes, singing would no more help our children and our wives to go to sleep. It will not be enough to give them food and fill their stomachs. No, they will not sleep till they touch the hard cold silver and gold money. And you see in Africa we know sleeping is the therapy of every disease. If someone doesn't sleep he becomes crazy and causes trouble. They even may start fire and burn the whole camp.   Therefore, our leaders taught us that since money is very rare like a snake's droppings, the best place to keep it is in their pockets. They also told us once their pockets were full they would send the rest for safekeeping in far away banks. This is why you see money is like a snake's droppings in our continent, we only hear about it but we never see it.   But lately, some of our young ones who went to schools and travelled to far away lands told us another story. They told us we have to have money to feed our children. They told us we need money to have schools, hospitals, roads and clean water. They told us that money was not evil and in fact it was not as rare as a snake's droppings after all. They told us to go to our leaders and ask them to build schools, hospitals and roads for us and provide us clean water. And when we told them our leaders became crazy and started beating us, killing us and driving us out of our farms and taking away our animals. This is why in Africa today you can see many wars, burnings and killings.   This is why we are worried when we hear Tony Blair, George Bush, Bob Geldof and other good intentioned people talking about money coming to us. We don't want more wars, more killings, and more burnings. We want to thank all for your generosity. Please don't give us money. Keep it in your far away banks. We will tell you what we want. We want our children to have good education like your children, so we need schools. We want medicine to treat our sick like you do, so we need hospitals. We want to send our products to far away markets so that we can get books and pencils for our schools, medicine for our hospitals and tools for our farms, so we need good roads and harbours and airports. We need clean water and electricity.   This is what we want Mr Blair, Mr Bush and Sir Geldof. Singing is our faculty, music is our soul, drumming is our tradition. This is what we know best. This is our language over the centuries. We sing to send our hungry children to sleep, you sing to make money. Money in Africa is as rare as snake's droppings and evil. It should be kept away from good people like us and be held tight in the hands of our leaders. Please don't give us money, just give us the means so our children could sleep in peace with our lullabies, go to schools and get medicine. Empower us, the people, and not our leaders. Thank you.   (Bashir Goth is an African journalist based in Abu Dhabi)   Rights: © 2005 Khaleej Times   30 June, 2005   "A Continent's success stories go unreported", by Niall FitzGerald. (IHT)   Africa is not short of press interest, particularly this year. But amid the successes of debt relief, the hopes pinned on the Group of 8 leaders who will meet next month, and the intervention of Bob Geldof, there is another story to Africa, one that is not concerned with famine, war or disease. It tells of economic growth, stability and political reform. But it is a story that is going unreported.   The news media are missing this story of Africa's development. Unaware of the trend, they are locked in a historical and generalized view of Africa.   Did anyone expect that war torn Mozambique would experience an economic growth rate of 10 percent on average in the last six or seven years? Or that we would see a similar turnaround in Tanzania? That both countries would quietly transition to new presidents through the ballot box? Yet if you look at the international news media, the focus is often on the negative. In the case of Tanzania you don't read about elections, but about the purchase of a presidential jet. This is hardly balanced and informed coverage.   In Africa today, 800 million people, half of them under 20, are determined to find a better standard of life. This year economic growth will be 5 percent - twice the rate of the European Union. Democracy and its institutions are spreading, slowly but steadily. In the last five years, two thirds of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa have had some form of multiparty elections, though clearly some are freer than others.   African leaders have declared their intention to set the agenda for change and be judged on its success through the New Partnership for African Development. Africa is on the verge of a huge investment in transport, education and health, and will be a major beneficiary of a successful conclusion of the current round of international trade talks.   I am not suggesting that the news media should only cover positive stories. It's about balanced context. Reporting exclusively on politics, conflict, famine and disease may be perpetuating an unbalanced picture of Africa and thereby obscuring the positive - and undermining investor confidence in the continent.   It is true that some of Africa's leaders have inflicted upon their people a triple whammy of corruption, incompetence and conflict. The news media have a role to play in applying pressure to the international community to act where injustices are being unleashed, as they did last year in waking the world to the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan.   It is right, too, to tell the world that 11 million children under the age of 5 die each year in Africa, that 350 million Africans live on less than $1 a day. But this story must not eclipse the fact that vast areas of the continent have taken enormous steps forward. If we only cover Africa when disaster strikes, we perpetuate the image of a continent in constant crisis. And that image is out of step with reality.   As we consider the role of foreign journalists in shaping Africa's image, for better or for worse, we should not forget about the continent's own news media. If the international press is not telling the story of advancement, perhaps the rebirth of national news agencies across the continent could create the critical mass of positive stories needed to wake up the world. These agencies would also give the international news media access to independent and objective reporting from the front line.   There are plenty of examples of nations that have built or re-established independent news agencies as part of their regeneration. In Iraq, for instance, an independent news agency is being created with help from the Reuters Foundation and the United Nations Development Program that will provide reliable news information within Iraq and from Iraq to the wider world.   The news media have a responsibility to observe. They also have a responsibility to tell it like it is. Business already knows that things are changing. It is no coincidence that Chinese companies are investing heavily in Nigerian telecommunications companies or Richard Branson in short-haul aviation.   In the face of an opportunity to resolve Africa's problems, we must show that Africa can rise to the challenge, confront the present and build a positive future. Much has already been achieved in some areas of the continent. That story must be told.   (Niall FitzGerald is chairman of Reuters.)
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