What Keeps Terrorism Alive
RAMI G. KHOURI
Published: September 12, 2008
Washington is most comfortable supporting Arab dictators and life-long presidents. Rice was meeting and dealing with the heads of state of Tunisia, Libya and Algeria, three of the most authoritarian figures in the world.
BEIRUT -- In this week marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attack on the United States, three noteworthy events related to the U.S. and the Middle East caught my eye: Al-Qaida's number two man Ayman Zawahiri released a new videotape; Republican Party vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin started her foreign policy education by meeting with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an extremist organization that puts Israeli interests above American interests; and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meeting and dealing with the heads of state of Tunisia, Libya and Algeria, three of the most authoritarian figures in the world, not just in the Middle East.
Why is this worldwide web of extremism noteworthy? It helps clarify that the terrorism scourge persists because its root causes continue to thrive. Those causes are multiple, complex and ever changing, and relate primarily to events in four orbits: the Arab-Asian region, Europe, Israel, and American foreign policy.
It is impossible in analytical or historical terms to separate the four main strands of sentiment and policy that have given birth to the contemporary Salafist terrorist movements we all suffer today: dictatorial or merely corrupt and incompetent Arab and Asian governments; violent and colonial Israeli policies; hypocritical and Israeli-influenced American policies that often manifest themselves in warfare; and, the consequent, more recent phenomenon of demeaned and disoriented young Arab-Asian immigrants in Europe, often second and third generation immigrants.
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