Have you ever thought that the war on terrorism is going in which direction? The real start of the war on terrorism was after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, The Pentagon and the United 93 crash. In these attacks, a lot of casualties took place and there was a huge loss of lives and capital. We will be analysing the tactics used against the war on terrorism, success of these tactics and the future of the war on terrorism.
There are a lot of tactics used to counter the terrorist forces; these tactics consisted of operations in Africa, Europe, Middle East, South Asia, South East Asia, North America and South America. October 2002, the Task Force- Horn of Africa was created in Djibouti at Camp Le Moeir and it consisted of almost 2,000 personnel adding U.S. Special Forces and military and alliance force members. This force received ships from different nation which are Pakistan, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom. The main aim of this force was to monitor, stop and inspect shipments from inflowing in Horn of Africa so that it does not affect the US.
In this mission, there was a military aid from Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya who were trained to control Counter terrorism tactics. On July 1st, 2006, a post was made by Osama Bin Laden a person who is expected to launch the 9/11 attacks, in his post, he persuaded the Somalis to construct an Islamic State in the region and threatened western governments to not to intervene, or they will have to face dire consequences. In the middle of 2006 the Islamic Courts Union took control of southern Somalia to restore Sharia Law in the region. December 2006 the US Assistant Secretary state Jendayi Frazer claimed that the courts were under the control of Al- Qaeda and this claim was later denied by Islamic Court Union (ICU). Later in the same year the ICU claimed that the UN- backed Transitional Federal Government of Somalia had a strong hold.on Baidoa and started and offensive mission against the government, first the court found some gains but Ethiopia intervened and favored the government. This resulted in the Battle of Jilib where the ICU fought against the Ethiopian forces. On 30th December, 2006 the Al- Qaeda leader urged the Muslims of the world to fight against Ethiopia in Somalia. The result of this was that US launched the Battle of Ras Kamboni in which militants were bombed with the aid of AC- 130 gun ships. In 2001 after the attacks of 9/11 the NATO forces started an Operation Active Endeavor which is a naval operation and in this operation the NATO forces are destined to prevent militants and Weapons of Mass Destruction to enter from the Mediterranean Sea. Iraq has been listed as a state sponsor of International terrorism after 1990 after it fell out of US in 1990 and the power of Saddam Hussein has proved to be a problem as it has been attacking its neighbors with the use of chemical weapons. It was claimed by the US and its allied forces that Iraq had control over weapons of mass destruction and it was even stated that Saddam is co-operating with the terrorist groups. This is the reason that Bush attacked Iraq to end the control of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq and to catch Saddam Hussein. Israel invaded south of Lebanon as three soldiers of Israel were killed and two were taken captives by Hezbollah. Later there was a cease fire between Lebanese and the Israeli government created by the United Nations Israeli stated that they were fighting a war on terrorism and the US government said that this conflict was a front in the “War on Terror” where as Hezbollah describes Israel as a terrorist. The US provided military aid to Lebanese when they were fight against an extremist group Fatah-al-Islam which is said to be a Jihadist a movement which is an inspiration of Al-Qaeda. Saudi Arabia was attacked by Al-Qaeda militants on May 12th, 2003, these attacks were on foreign workers, tourists and Saudi security forces. Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by United States, European Union and United Nations, Hamas has been fighting with Fata a group backed by the US from 2006. This is conflict between two major factions of Palestine as both of them are trying to achieve political control of Palestinian territories. Hamas has been able to win the first ever free and democratic elections taken place in Palestinian territories. After the Hamas’ invasion of the Gaza Strip there was a fight between the Israel and Hamas’ troops which resulted in Hamas’ rocket attacks on Southern Israel and the Israeli troops answered back with huge air strikes and ground operations on the Gaza Strip. Later Israeli planes hit and arms band in Sudan, the convoy consisted of Ethiopians, Eriteans and Sudanese which heads crossed Egypt’s Sinai desert to the border with Gaza from where the weapons would be supplied to Gaza. Israeli was helped by U.S. as US allowed them to use their military airbase in Djibouti; U.S. also provided military assistance as and agreement to stop the smuggling of weapons in Gaza.
“Reportedly, the Israeli planes used a US base in Djibouti to stage the attacks, as part of the agreement between Israel and the outgoing Bush Administration made in mid January. Israeli officials would neither confirm nor deny the attacks.” (Ditz, 2009).
It is confirmed that the crowd Al-Qaeda has a well-built presence in Yemen and there has been a lot of attacks on foreigners in Yemen and the government of Yemen is frail leaving a lot of odds for the terrorist to be taught over there. India has faced a lot of terrorist attacks from different so called Islamic groups such as a recent attack called the Mumbai bombings, India claims that it has done by Pakistani terrorist but not have been able to prove it other attacks in India consist of 2001 Indian Parliament attack,, 2005 Delhi bombings, 2006 Mumbai train bombings and many others. These attacks have left a hatred and chances of fight between Pakistan and India as Indian government has always ended up accusing Pakistan for these attacks but the fear of nuclear power and with the help of international diplomacy these tensions have relaxed all the time, but we should not forget the fact that although India is recognized as the largest democratic country of the world but still they discriminate between Hindus and Muslims, although there are about 400 million Muslims in India which have left no option to the Muslims but to agitate. India has worked closely with Russia, China, US, Israel and United Kingdom to fight against the terrorism of world. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and Osama Bin Laden who is suspected to be in Afghanistan claimed that he was responsible for the attacks, a war was started by the US, UK and some collation forces on Afghanistan in which they were able to invade Afghanistan. However, the purpose of removing Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremist groups was not achieved. In this invasion aerial bombing was done on Afghanistan by the military forces of the allies and collation of US. When Bush demanded Afghanistan to hand over Osama Bin Laden, they failed to do so and without even clearing things up with Afghanistan, they started a war on Afghanistan. Today there are more military troops to be sent to Afghanistan which will be done by taking out forces from Iraq. US and Pakistan collation was able to kill Zayn Al-Abidn Muhammed Hasayn Abu Zubaydah when he tried to escape during the raid done by military personnel. This guy is said to be a top most official of Al-Qaeda, later Ramiz Binalshibh was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, and he is expected to be a financial backer of Al-Qaeda, then Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was arrested during CIA raid in Rawalpindi, Pakistan and he was the third highest ranking official in Al-Qaeda and was expected to be the in charge of September 11 attacks and this person was expected to have links with Oplan Bojinka, a plot to bomb a lot of US civilians according to US.
The arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the single most important in the war on terror since September 11, said a law enforcement official close to the investigation (Ressa et al, 2003).
In 2006, Pakistan was accused by the NATO forces for the involvement and funding of Terrorist groups but later the NATO affirmed that there was no evidence of such allegations. There has been a recent increase in illegal attacks on Pakistani areas by the American military though Pakistan is heavily aided Pakistan government to help fight terrorism. In 2004 Pakistan army started a military action against the federally administrated Tribal Areas of Waziristan and has been able to achieve the goal of removing the two so called terrorist groups, Al-Qaeda and Taliban from those areas. US drones are continually attacking the areas administered by tribes of Pakistan. In 2004, 2005 and 2002 Indonesians have been attacked by suicide bombers and hidden bombs these attack were done in the areas of Bali, Jimbaran, Kuta and Jakarta. Jemaah Islamiyah is suspected to carry out these attacks. 2002 US Special Operations Command with the help of Philippines armed forces launched an attack in fighting terrorism in which they were able to remove Abu Sayyaf Group and Jemmah Islamiyah from their strong hold on Basilan. This attack was known as Operation Smiles. In United States of America the justice department started a Special Registration process for certain male non-citizens in US, Bush administration increased domestic efforts to fight terrorism and future attacks like 9/11 and a new cabinet was formed naming United States Department of Homeland Security, DARPA was started in 2002 according to which monitoring of information technology will be done to counter terrorism but this plan has been defunded after huge criticism. Since 2001, 9/11 attacks a lot of attacks and attempts of attacks have been made on the state such as a plan to crash air planes into the US Bank Tower, the 2003 plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, the plot to attack the financial buildings such as the International Monetary Funds and World Bank and some more but no attacks have been successful as yet. Several plots have been made to attack United Kingdom and many have been successful such as 7/7 and 21/7 bombing in London in 2005. After the 9/11 attacks United States government increased their military funding to Columbia, in 2003 around 98 million dollars were spent to train the Columbian military, the purpose of this training was to enable Columbia to fight the FARC rebel group which is considered as a terrorist group by the United States.
These were some of the tactics involved in fighting the war on terrorism with details of threats and attacks by terrorist groups in different regions of the world and this even consisted of military aid, government aid and police aid by different countries to fight terrorism.
Although there have been attempts made to fight terrorism but still some attempts have failed and some attempts have been successful. The result of war on terrorism in Africa was that 8 militants of ICU were killed, 2 civilians were killed and the prime target, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed survived the attacks. Later it was claimed that ICU captured 11 or 15 US Marines. The result of war on terrorism in Iraq was that the allegations by US, that Iraq was involved in development of Weapons of Mass destruction proved to be wrong as according to a survey no such weapons were found, although some traces of the weapons before 1990 were found and the claim that Saddam was helping the terrorist was again proved to be wrong, about 85,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqis were killed, 7ss3% of US military deaths and leaving the political, economical and social structure of Iraq with bad health. In Lebanon the war of Lebanon and Israel was even called a war on terrorism in which almost 800 to 1300 Lebanese died and 163 Israelis, in Israel 119 military personals were found dead and 44 civilians died. Later Lebanese attack the camps of Fatah al-Islam, an Islamic militant organization. Lebanese destroyed the camps and claimed victory. The US provided military aid to the Lebanese. Although a lot of terrorist attacks have taken place but nothing has been done to counter these attacks, they have always ended up blaming Pakistan for these attacks, some training has been given to Indian military to counter terrorism. The result of war on terror in Afghanistan was that in Kandhar where militants had a strong hold, numbering 2000 in strength, attacks by the collation forces led to death of 100-200 of the al-Qaeda fighters were killed. In operation Anaconda, eight American soldiers and seven Afghanistan soldiers died and four hundred opposing soldiers were killed and several members of the coalition were killed. When the Taliban’s started to regroup in 2002 and 2003, about 200 people were killed even some Afghan police men were killed, to this incident the collation killed more than 100 Taliban militants. In 2009 Taliban claimed that they have killed 5,220 foreign soldiers, 2818 NATO forces, 7552 Afghan soldiers and police. A report from media said that 286 military members of the collation were killed in 2009. Civilian casualties amounted to 7000 to 18000 according to an estimate where as different news channels and news papers have claimed different amount of deaths. In Pakistan the success of war on terrorism is that Zayn al-Abidn Muhammed Hasayn Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed were arrested by Pakistan armed forces. All these people were supported al-Qaeda in different ways or were al-Qaeda officials. Although Pakistan has been one of the biggest supporters of war on terrorism, it has been called as a terrorist country and its intelligence have been regarded as people helping the terrorist. 2007 resulted in the deaths of 1000 Pakistani soldiers according to Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte of US, Pakistan army official reported deaths of 600 Pakistani soldiers and 1300 civilians and estimated deaths of 900 Pakistan military, above 2000 injuries, deaths of 488 foreign extremist were killed and 324 were injured. These were the results from war on terrorism in Waziristan.
From 2001 until today, at least 966 military men were martyred and 2259 others were injured; 488 foreign extremists were killed, 24 others were arrested and 324 foreign extremists were injured (Nagpal, 2007).
The war on terror has been a complete failure, there are less terrorist killed than civilians, if we go through the results of the tactics used against terrorist and terrorism, and we will only find one thing that civilians are being killed. The war on terror was initiated for the welfare of the public, but I do not see any advantage public has received from these wars and counter terrorism acts. Have the world really been able to kill terrorist or are they giving birth to more terrorism. Iraq was attacked on the fact that Iraqi government was producing weapons of mass destructions, no sign of the assumptions were traced and the end result was that more than 10 million civilians were killed. If the strategies of war on terrorism will not come to an end, we might see a new flow of terrorists, as the civilians will one day get fed up of being killed and turn themselves into so called terrorist and start fighting those who are fighting the war on terrorism. Not only the civilians, the deaths of military have even amazed every body, we saw thousands of military being killed in Waziristan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, we have seen really less deaths of militants or important names of people, assumed to be terrorists. One day, nation’s saviors will become frustrated and will not join the war on terrorism. People have lost their beloved, worlds economic situation have worsened and more capital is being invested on the war on terrorism with results equal to zero. If this capital would have been used to counter illiteracy, counter economic crises and for the welfare of human beings then we might have been able to see a better world today. US is spending a big part of their capital on the war on terrorism but have failed to gain any result from these war, if the welfare of the human beings will be over looked then we might be able to see more terrorists and more criminals on the roads. Are we really fighting terrorists or giving birth to them? One point that need to be considered is that, is this war on terrorism or war on Muslims, we see many people converting into Muslims every day and it is even assumed that 1000 human beings are becoming Muslims and if the attacks on Muslim states do not stop then we might see the harmonies people of Islam turning into terrorist and the whole world will have to give up against them. There are many countries in the world with a lot of Muslims but only Muslim countries are being attacked in search of terrorists. The strategies and tactics used to counter war have failed just because of one reason and it is that the collation forces fighting against terrorism do not have a really good intelligence working on counter terrorism. Please save the world and the future of humans and invest capital and time on the economic future of the world, literacy of the world and not on terrorism.
References
- Jason Ditz, Israel Killed 39 in Attack on Sudan Convoy, January Strike Destroyed Several Trucks, Injured Civilians, Web.
- Maria Ressa, Mike Boettcher, Ash-Har Quraishi, Kelli Arena and Suzanne Malveaux, U.S.: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed planned 9/11 attacks, ‘Appropriate pressure’ being put on al Qaeda leader, 1, 2003.
- Sahil Nagpal, 600 Pakistan security men killed in 28 suicide attacks after Lal Masjid operation, 2007. Web.
- Young, M. (2003). The war on terrorism. San Diego: Greenhaven Press.