Hold the Marines, send in the grocers

by Rami G. Khouri

Here's another wake-up call for all of us in the Arab world and the West who watch with increasing concern the current global war by and against terror. Jordanian authorities Monday night broadcast televised "confessions" by several captured alleged leaders of a plot by Al Qaeda-linked Islamist terrorists to explode massive chemical bombs in the capital Amman. Some estimates say that the operation could have killed between 20,000 and 80,000 people. Wake-up time.

Jordanian intelligence officials admit they are not certain if the captured chemicals aimed to set off a "toxic cloud" chemical weapon or only to create massive explosions. Here is what is not in doubt, however: a few men (and not for the first time in Jordan) planned the operation through personal and telephone contacts across several countries (at least Jordan, Iraq and Syria), including moving $170,000 across borders. They bought, stored and prepared for use 20 tonnes of chemicals, assorted explosives and three specially modified trucks to crash through security barricades.

The sophistication of the alleged plot is noteworthy. Jordanian security specialists claim the plotters planned to mix a combination of 71 lethal chemicals, including nerve gas, choking agents, and a large quantity of sulphuric acid, a potential blistering agent that could cause third-degree burns and can also maximise the bang of conventional explosions.

A Jordanian government scientist said the operational plans included a carefully measured mixture of chemical agents and explosives that would spread a deadly cloud, while maintaining the chemicals' potency as the cloud moved through the city. The three primary targets allegedly were the Jordanian intelligence headquarters, the Prime Ministry, and the American embassy. This would have been Al Qaeda's first chemical attack, according to one of the confessions aired on Jordanian television. Wake-up call.

Why? Because it reflects a wider pattern that has been both predictable and partly visible in recent months - a pattern of Al Qaeda and other terror groups devising new means of carrying out deadly attacks, along with a wider range of targets around the world. We seem to be witnessing simultaneously three dangerous developments that are consistent with the ideology and behaviour of groups who share the worldview of Osama Ben Laden: centralised groups and the so-called global terror "network" seem to be fragmenting into more locally organised cells that manage their own operations. The targets being hit are now less particularly American and almost indiscriminately global, including civilians and state symbols in Arab and Islamic countries, Europe and Asia. And the terror attack means being used are both more sophisticated (chemical bombs in Jordan, remotely activated bombs in Madrid) and more basic (car bombs and suicide bombers everywhere). Terror, like the global economy, is being privatised, franchised, out-sourced, and decentralised. Wake-up time.

The American-led approach to the global war on terror that aimed at one level to stop the state-to-state proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by overthrowing the Iraqi regime has led to a much wider and more dangerous proliferation of weapons of self-destruction - suicide bombers who are attacking targets all over the world. The simultaneous proliferation of terrorists into smaller, autonomous groups that attack a wider range of targets, using means that are increasingly more difficult to prevent, represents the most dangerous turn in the global terror phenomenon since the Sept. 11 attacks and the counterattacks by the US that they sparked.

Police and military actions do disrupt terror plans, but police actions alone cannot prevent the execution of some of the plots now being planned. A more robust and rational focus on the full, underlying political, social and economic causes of terror, combined with vigorous police work and military assaults, is the only way to break this cycle and beat the terrorists.

The United States and its NATO allies in the "free world" used that sort of combined strategy successfully to defeat communism - by containing and confronting it militarily, but simultaneously delegitimising it politically and economically through non-military means, and undermining its popular support at home. Communism collapsed when it was no longer supported or accepted by its own citizenry, who yearned to achieve their rights and aspirations through more democratic, participatory and free systems of governance and economy. Communism was defeated more by Lech Walesa and his Polish electricians and port workers than by William Westmoreland and his troops and battleships.

Terrorism today clearly is not like communism in decades past. Yet, from the perspective of its victims and targets, terrorism can only be defeated by a strategy that delegitimises it in its own heartland (the Arab-Asian region primarily) and gives its citizenry the incentive to work with the rest of the world to change the negative environments that breed terrorists.

American Marines alone can never win a war on terror, even with drones, night goggles, and a million Apache helicopters. Only the community that spawns terrorists can stifle terrorists in the end. Only Arab, Malaysian, Pakistani, south London, and north New Jersey grocers can do that. And the grocers from these regions these days tend mostly to watch the terror from their communities on television; they see it partly as a mortal enemy to be defeated in battle, but mostly as an inevitable, morally messy historical reaction to the ailments that Arabs, Asians, Muslims and other aggrieved people have suffered.

This is why terrorism is doubly awful. It inflicts great pain on the innocent victims of its bombs, but it also generates moral contortions within the minds of the decent ordinary citizens whose communities have turned into human bomb factories.

The thwarted Amman operation should wake up Arabs, Americans, Asians and everyone else to the directions in which terror is moving, and to the limitations of the current war against terror. One of these trucks is going to get through to its destination one of these days, whether in Riyadh, Amman, Newark or Manchester. Tens of thousands of people may well die in a single day, in your neighbourhood, or mine, maybe tomorrow, or next week. It's predictable, likely, terrible - but not inevitable. Now is when we need to pause and devise a more realistic and effective battle against terror. Hold the Marines for a moment, and let's mobilise the grocers if we want to achieve real victory over terrorism.