The brutal murder of Paul Marshall Johnson was not the first such act of terrorism targeting innocent civilians, and it is not likely to be the last. The murderers of Johnson in Riyadh and Nicholas Berg in Baghdad, just like the murderers of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, are part of a global campaign of terror that has been long in the making, way before 9/11 and the wars to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq.
These criminals are fulfilling a global agenda, now championed by Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants, but not limited to the Al-Qaeda organization. And it is by no means a campaign limited to murdering and terrorizing Americans and Westerners. The blowing up of dozens of Iraqis in a series of car bomb explosion on Thursday, and many such barbaric crimes perpetrated over the past several years throughout the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the U.S., were committed by people bearing the same "ideology" and carrying the same goals. Al-Qaeda has become the most recognizable brand name for global terrorism, just as McDonald's has become the global brand name for burgers. But what do these people hope to achieve by their loosely coordinated and bloody global campaign of terror?
In order to understand the mindset behind such actions, it is important to take note of many things in common between these global killings. They're all carried out in the name of Islam against all evidence that Islam abhors such actions. All were executed in the most brutal, spectacular, and dramatic way possible. Many such acts, from Baghdad to Riyadh to Gaza, were video taped and the perpetrators appeared hooded, ninja style. (One wonders: what's the point of parading in front of the camera if you're going to be hooded anyway? Why show off your gun if your victim is tied and you do not need to use it? Remember Bin Laden was video taped with his gun on his side?
One thing we know for sure about these psychotic murderers is that they seek as much publicity as they can possibly get. And they're getting it. They seek to terrorize as many people as possible, and they're succeeding. How do they manage to sell their "cause" to many in the region, and why do they have sympathizers in the Arab and Muslim world? Here is one explanation: Western colonialist powers established and propped up these corrupt puppet regimes in the Middle East since the turn of the last century. These secular dictatorships and authoritarian governments, pretending to embrace Islam, and have been in collusion with the secular west in return for the west's support to keep them in power against the will of the people and their best interests. As a result, the Middle East, for the past 80-90 years, has been ruled by secular but oppressive regimes that have crushed all political dissent. But unlike Turkey's Ataturk, these regimes were unable to close down mosques or banish extremist religious teachings in madrassas.
These regimes, supported by the west for decades, have produced what is now recognized globally as the most failed states in the world. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates justify their violent subversive means of seeking to sever the links between these regimes and the west, and the drive to overthrow them, by the fact that they have no means of peaceful opposition, which is actually banned in most of these countries.
Violence thus becomes the only alternative, while religion becomes the rallying cry for the oppressed against both their own regimes, and those in the west supporting them. But is it that simple? Of course not. No frustrated and desperate muslim wakes up in the morning and decides to go blow himself up at a police station in Baghdad or kidnap a westerner in Riyadh or drive his TNT-laden car into a crowd and detonating it. There are actual organizations that are well-financed and able to provide logistical support to ignorant and brain-washed recruits who are promised a coveted place in heaven.
Notice that Osama Bin Laden never carried out a suicide attack himself? Of course, he wouldn't. Who else will take over power once these corrupt dictatorships fall? These kids have to sacrifice themselves on his behalf, while he acts as God's representative on earth. Isn't that what kids in many parts of the broader Middle East are taught at the same mosques and madrassas that oppressive regimes could not close down?
A policy of appeasement is a recipe for a global disaster. But holding governments in the region alone responsible and putting pressure on them is not a solution. We must not forget that the west supported this brand of militant Islam when it was fighting communism in the Soviet Union in Afghanistan from as far back as the fourties. We must not forget that the west has also tolerated injustice perpetrated by "strategic allies" against people in the region, including the Palestinians. Both the west and their authoritarian allies in the region are responsible for the current state of affairs. This is exactly why President Bush recognized that American and western policies pursued in the Middle East for the 60 years were wrong and had to be redressed. This is why the "Partnership for Progress with the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative" was launched at the G-8 Summit at Sea Island, Georgia earlier this month.
And this is why America has just started to deal with a problem that has festered for decades. But what do we do in the meantime, until the goal of liberating the people in the Broader Middle East and North Africa is achieved, a prospect that may take a generation? One thing that can be done is to deprive terrorists from their prize achievement: publicity. A universal agreement needs to be reached to ban the broadcasting of any video tapes filmed by the terrorists, and to impose a total blackout on all their statements to the media. They must be deprived from any forum they are now using to spread their murderous propaganda. There should be no forum for those justifying murders of innocents. The media focus needs to be on the victims of the killers not on the killers themselves. This is one way to deprive the enemies of the civilized world of their greatest asset. Just like Nazi supporters and sympathizers were banned from all forums, so should be these terrorists.
Television ought to take the lead in this effort. The decision not to show pictures of dead victims of 9/11 is a commendable one, though Osama and his cohorts continued to look with glee at the pictures of the collapsing twin towers in New York. The project to rebuild and democratize Iraq needs to continue with more vigour. The G-8 agenda for spreading democracy in the region must be pursued with a bigger determination, and dictators in the Middle East must be shunned by the free world. Injustice must be redressed wherever it is perpetrated. In other words, America and its western allies must do the right thing if we're going to ever put an end to this scourge of terrorism.
About the Writer: Salameh Nematt, former advisor to King Abdullah of Jordan, is the bureau chief of Dar AL Hayat in Washington, D.C. He is represented by Eleana Benador from http://www.benadorassociates.com.
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