Posted on 09/06/2003 3:54:08 PM PDT by quidnunc
If you happen to find yourself in Nouakchott, a dusty and rarely visited city of three million on the far western edge of the Sahara, you may be surprised to find an unlikely sort of character hanging around government buildings and better hotels. These new strangers, whose ranks have been growing steadily in recent months, are a species of serious-looking American men who bear little resemblance to the oil explorers and motorcycle adventurers who until recently were this city's only foreign visitors.
These men, the first Americans in decades to pay any attention to this poor region, began to appear only in the past two years. With their grim and purposeful presence, they bring a Graham Greene sort of mood to this very remote outpost, but instead of seersucker suits and Panama hats, they tend to wear floppy safari hats and sunglasses, the unofficial uniform of the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Special Forces.
What are these quiet Americans doing in the capital of Mauritania, a nation that has never made the front pages and sits a continent and a half removed from the immediate interests of the United States? And what are their colleagues in a dozen other far-flung regions doing, handing out money and guns and hard-won secrets to governments and warlords and military men in the southern islands of the Philippines, on the steppes of Uzbekistan, in the dense jungle between Venezuela and Brazil?
The guys in the sunglasses have a name for this not-so-secret campaign. They call it World War Four, an unofficial title that is now used routinely by top officials and ground-level operatives in the U.S. military and the CIA. It is a global war, one of the most expensive and complex in world history. And it will mark its second anniversary this week, on Sept. 11.
The White House would rather it be known as the war on terrorism. But in its strategies, political risk and secrecy, it is more like the Cold War, which the CIA types like to consider World War Three. Its central battles, in Afghanistan and Iraq, have been traditional conflicts. But while the public's attention was focused on those big, controversial and expensive campaigns, the United States was busy launching a broader war whose battlefields have spread quietly to two dozen countries.
Iraq also was a distraction in another way: It was a shocking and awesome display of conventional military might that is not at all typical of the stealth, spy craft, diplomacy and dirty tricks being employed in the wider war on terrorism. Likewise, "although Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan understandably captured the imagination and attention of the press and public," said William Rosenau, a former senior policy adviser in the State Department, "large-scale military operations are arguably the smallest aspect of the counterterrorism campaign. That campaign resembles an iceberg, with the military component at the top, visible above the water."
Below the surface are dozens of operations, some secret and some simply unnoticed, conducted by the CIA, the FBI, the diplomatic corps and small, elite military squads. They have been aided by changes to U.S. laws after Sept. 11 that allow Americans to do things once forbidden — such as assassinating foreign figures.
And much of the war is being fought by foreign governments that are willing and able to do things Americans wouldn't or couldn't. "We simply don't have the resources, or the inclination, to be everywhere the terrorists and their supporters are, so we have no choice but to co-operate with other countries and their security services," Mr. Rosenau said during a panel discussion in Washington last week.
In some cases, that co-operation has led the United States to endorse and enable activities that are deeply unsavoury, all in the name of stomping out terrorism. "Counterterrorism is now 90 per cent law enforcement and intelligence," said Jonathan Stevenson, a senior strategist with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "Since Sept. 11, the only overt military actions have been the Predator [missile] strike in Yemen, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — and I don't think there will be many more. I think there's a much higher priority placed on law enforcement and intelligence now. It's not a traditional war."
Whether this is actually a world war, or a large-scale police action, or (as both critics and some supporters say) the gestation of a new American imperialism, there is no question that it has come to span the globe. It has caused mammoth shifts in global allegiances, in the positioning of U.S. military bases and CIA stations, in the flow of aid dollars, soldiers and arms across distant borders, on a scale not seen since the Cold War began.
Over the summer, while the world's attention was focused on Iraq, the Pentagon was busily preparing to shift hundreds of thousands of soldiers to new real estate, in places most Westerners known little about, in preparation for a world war that could last decades. "Everything is going to move everywhere," Pentagon undersecretary Douglas Feith said. "There is not going to be a place in the world where it's going to be the same as it used to be."
-snip-
What the United States is doing, and where, in its secretive war on terror:
Southeast Asia: Setting up bases in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, shifting troops away from their old base in Japanese islands. Mission: To combat Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda, such as Jemaah Islamiyah.
The Philippines: Heavy Special Forces and CIA presence in the south, preparing to send in thousands of additional troops to help Manila combat Islamic opposition and terror groups.
Central Asia: Remote steppe nations ruled by dubious governments, such as Uzbekistan, have provided airstrips and intelligence in exchange for aid and arms, and are home to Islamic groups tied to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Horn of Africa: A major installation in tiny Djibouti allows the United States to operate on a permanent basis in Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania, Somalia.
Chechnya and Georgia: Military assistance and weapons are being provided to Russia, which claims the former Soviet republics have rebel movements tied to al-Qaeda.
Sahara: Suspicion that al-Qaeda may have sought refuge along ancient desert trade routes when driven out of north Africa has prompted military aid and support to Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad, perhaps sites of future bases.
South America: Thousands of Saudi expats live in the remote jungle "tri-border region" between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, where al-Qaeda is rumoured to have training camps and to be receiving financial support from locals. U.S. covert forces now in the area, and eyeing Arabs living on Margarita Island, the tourist hot spot in Venezuela.
Pakistan and Afghanistan: Still a major military focus, with al-Qaeda and Taliban forces active in mountainous regions between the two countries. Considerable financial and military aid goes to Pakistan, even though elements in its military appear to back Islamists.
Iraq: Intelligence officials never believed there were any substantial links between Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime and al-Qaeda (which once declared it an enemy). But now a terrorist presence seems to have emerged, fuelled by foreign mujahedeen who have entered the country just to fight Americans.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
If they were after you you'd be pooping your pants Ms. Tough keyboard warrior!
Agreed. Unfortunately there's one nation in which we are not seriously fighting this war: The United States of America. Until we rid ourselves of the "PC" mindset that determines, for example, which airline passengers are subject to scrutiny we will be vulnerable to multiple repeats of 9/11.
One elderly woman, who walked with a cane, barely managed to maintain her composure as a government agent worked her over with a magnetic wand. Putting her arms straight out to her sides appeared to be a challenge--she had to grip her cane to steady herself a couple of times before she finally was able to maintain her balance.
Well, at least they're not profiling...
Well, he is a Canadian, after all.
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