American raids are not answer to terror

The US capture near Libyan capital Tripoli of a high ranking Al Qaeda terrorist, Anas al-Liby, with a $5-million bounty on his head, and its raid on the villa of an al-Shehab (an Al Qaeda affiliate) leader in Somalia in an Abbotabad-style operation, attests to the magnificence of American science and technology capabilities and its military superiority over any other power in the world. No other country has the military, technological or financial muscle to undertake such an exercise far from its shores, and in such precise and spectacular fashion, clearly underlying the fact that the Americans take their enemies very seriously and track their movement for over long stretches of time (15 years in al-Liby’s case). While the scale of the effort, and the perseverance displayed, can inspire awe, the American pattern of striking where it pleases, in pursuit of its philosophy of pursuing its enemies, will be deemed to be in violation of international law. The US has indeed used the argument against the Russians for mounting military efforts in the Caucasus to take out terrorists, citing human rights law in particular. Aside from the selective approach to canons of law, it is clear that ungoverned Libya, after the ouster, capture and killing of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and Somalia, presented easy targets to the US military and security establishment. Leave alone military resistance of any worthwhile nature, these were zero-risk operations even from a political point of view. The situation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt, in contrast, offers a counterpoint to the successful American strikes in far-flung countries of Africa. Twelve years after invading Afghanistan to oust the Taliban government, the US is literally suing for peace as it works hard on getting out of the Afghan quagmire with its military and political prestige intact. The shock commando raid of last year inside Pakistan that killed Al Qaeda founding figure Osama bin Laden helped US President Barack Obama win points with his domestic constituency for a time, but not much else. The essential problem of the Taliban and its Pakistani patrons — in its military and political dimension — remains. Indeed, the terrorists have been emboldened in anticipation of US departure in 2014. Essentially, this state of affairs springs from Washington failing to ask Islamabad tough questions as regards its two-faced policy. Instead, it chose drone attacks inside Pakistan to kill terrorist cadres of various organisations at the cost of hurting Pakistani sovereignty and put the backs up of ordinary Pakistanis. The war against terrorism can only be won if ordinary people in terrorist-affected countries are made to understand who their enemies are and if states sponsoring terrorism are punished according to international law. Strikes in the desert are hardly the answer.