/ 6 May 2011

Still fertile soils for jihadists

It is hard to be sympathetic to Osama bin Laden, despite his pitiless assassination at the hands of United States special forces in the early hours of Monday, ghoulishly watched on screen by Barack Obama and his security chiefs.

Quite apart from the attack on New York’s Twin Towers, he was involved in other atrocities, most notably the bombing of US embassies in East Africa in which hundreds of ­innocent Africans were the principal victims.

If the US did not inform the Pakistani government of the planned raid on Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad — and the facts are not entirely clear at the moment – such a breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty is also hard to fault. There have been ­persistent claims that the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, is thoroughly penetrated by al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathisers. The US had solid grounds for fearing that Bin Laden would have been tipped off before the raid.

Amid varying emerging accounts of the 40-minute raid during which al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed, we take a look at the compound where he hid during the course of the past 10 years.

Where we most clearly part company with the US is over its apparent belief that al-Qaeda and the forces of world jihadism have been dealt a crippling blow. This is a fantasy. Bin Laden’s death may have some effect on al-Qaeda, although the extent to which he was still involved in operational matters remains unclear.

But it was never a hierarchical operation with an all-powerful leadership that could be killed by decapitation — more a kind of franchise with a highly decentralised structure that provides a permanent ideological inspiration for would-be jihadist martyrs. Besides, the obsessional focus on al-Qaeda and its leaders is misleading.

As we report today al-Qaeda was just one of scores of jihadist groupings scattered across the broad arc of crisis from Indonesia to Morocco. Indeed, some analysts believe that without Bin Laden’s symbolic unifying influence the chaotic proliferation of militants may be harder to monitor and control.

It is similarly misleading to argue that the centre of gravity has shifted in the Arab-speaking world from jihad against the West to the struggle for democracy against repressive North African and Middle Eastern regimes.

There are signs, particularly in Libya where the citizenry is deeply divided, that the “Arab Spring” may have shot its bolt, and there is no guarantee that in liberated countries such as Tunisia and Egypt despotism may not reassert itself. But in any event the two tendencies are not mutually exclusive — it would be a mistake to think that the push for internal democracy implies sympathy for Western interests, ways and values.

And it is worth pointing out that in Morocco two weeks ago 15 people, many of them Western tourists, were killed in a remote-controlled bombing in Marrakesh, apparently by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The hard truth is that conditions are still ripe for jihadism. The Twin Towers attack was carried out by men whose main grievance was US support for Israel and the continued horrors of occupation and blockade that confront the Palestinian people. A decade later, the plight of the Palestinians has worsened, not improved.

While US and European troops remain on Afghan and Iraqi soil, and Palestinian grievances remain unresolved, there will always be recruits to the cause of terrorist violence against the West.

Voting in the streets
In South Africa we boast about a lot of things. We talk about our Constitution, which is hailed as a model of democracy around the world. We point to our relative stability, our icon Nelson Mandela and our ability to rise to the ­occasion when required — much as we did when we hosted the 2010 World Cup. But we must be careful not to get carried away with gratuitous self-delusion about our place on the global stage.

On Thursday President Jacob Zuma told the World Economic Forum gathering in Cape Town that public service delivery protests were a sign of a healthy democracy in South Africa. He said other countries that did not have such protests simply did not have the democratic space to show their frustration.

It may well be that this space exists, but do not tell that to the family of Andries Tatane, who was brutally killed, allegedly by policemen, while exercising those very rights during such a protest in Ficksburg in the Free State. But the president’s statement might be going a step further. It could also have the unfortunate meaning that protesters should be grateful to the government that they are allowed this type of leverage to embarrass it.

Part of what people are expressing through these protests — and through their repeated and vocal intentions to withhold their vote in the upcoming elections — is their frustration that the electoral system does not quite allow them to be heard by those who are meant to serve them.

We should certainly celebrate our openness. But we must be careful not to undermine the poor and use their grievances to score political points. People stage protests because the basic services to which they are entitled have not been delivered. If anything, the government should be asking itself why so many are taking to the streets to be heard instead of ticking a box on election day.

Some in government have resorted to the claim that they “are victims of their own delivery”: that the more the government delivers, the more people feel entitled to that delivery. Our leaders should familiarise themselves with the reasons behind the ­protests instead of putting a glossy spin on people’s grievances.