CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: A course about Al-Qaeda and the rise of international terrorism was one of the most popular last term at Harvard s elite Kennedy School of Government. The international students crowding into the school s largest auditorium for the twice-weekly classes were a cross-section of Americans, Europeans and Middle Easterners, and current members of the US army and intelligence community on sabbatical leave. Simply attending it gave me a sense of where tomorrow s western and westernized elites stand vis-à-vis the long war .
The instructor for the course was Peter Bergen, the journalist who bagged Osama bin Laden s first face-to-face interview on CNN. His book, The Osama Bin Laden I Know, made him sought-after in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, as his international relations colleagues scrambled to shed backgrounds in Soviet studies and switch to the geopolitics of the Middle East. Bergen became a transnational terrorism analyst who challenged the tendency to lump all terrorists into one group. Instead, he classified them by generation, regional provenance and the conflict that shaped their intellectual outlook.
The last class of the course was the most instructive: how elite Americans perspectives of the war on terror have matured. From horror, incomprehension and the rush to conclude that they hate us for our freedoms – typical of the post-9/11 response – there is now a shift towards viewing Al-Qaeda as a fractious group that can be subverted and defeated by manipulating its internal divisions.
Bergen paced the auditorium, asking his students for their recommendations on defeating al Qaeda. Intelligence reform and the restructuring of the bureaucracy topped the agenda. Some suggested that the shortage of analysts in intelligence agencies could be overcome by scrubbing top secret intelligence of any clues that might suggest what its source was (thus not jeopardizing field agents) and then inviting non-security-cleared analysts in the commercial intelligence arena to mull it over.
Others thought America s Arab immigrants should be seen as a strength rather than the liability that the security clearance program currently tends to classify them as. Kareem, a student of Lebanese origin, suggested that the department of homeland security deploy a network of informants drawn from immigrant communities because these guys have come over here and benefited from the bounty, so they should put something back . A diplomat wearing a US-Kuwait Friendship T-shirt suggested (apparently seriously) that Pentagon employees with 20-plus years of service should be recycled into the US State Department and the CIA to rejuvenate these institutions.
Generally, the American students leaned towards superficial solutions for winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world. A deft repackaging of the war on terror or the realigning of bureaucratic entities in the Departments of Defence and State would do it, they seemed to think.
One American student proposed that the US government should confront al Qaeda with brand denial by banning US spokesmen and officials from referring to the organisation by its name. Deprived of the oxygen of publicity, he reasoned, the terrorists would shrivel up and die. Bergen asked the student whether the Bush administration should also ban the domestic press from referring to al Qaeda. The student spluttered and the auditorium exploded in laughter.
Many Americans are still reluctant to acknowledge that slicker packaging will not make US policies more palatable to Middle Eastern audiences or improve Washington s image in the region. The debacle of Al-Hurra, the Arabic-language TV network funded by the State Department is one example. But such shallow reasoning echoes at the very highest levels of the administration. In a speech last November, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates expressed surprise at how al Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America .
Al Qaeda s anti-western, anti-interventionist message resonates with Arab and Muslim audiences sick of what they view as neo-colonial meddling in their region. These views are fed by daily television coverage of US-led occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, American support for unpopular governing elites and the stymieing of popular political movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas when they win at the ballot box.
Back in Bergen s auditorium, a lone European student ventured that only a substantive shift in Washington s policy towards the region could bear true fruit and boost the US quest to succeed in the struggle against terrorism. Ceasing uncritical support for Israel, the student proposed, might overcome the impression in the Arab world that the United States is not an honest broker . Silence greeted his comments.
Will a new generation of Kennedy School graduates become effective bureaucratic and military foot soldiers in the long war? Can they provide America with the cultural awareness it needs if it is to vanquish its foes on the Middle East s battlegrounds?
Terrorism experts such as Marc Sageman believe that Al-Qaeda is already on the ropes. Others, like former CIA agent Michael Scheuer, have more cynical explanations for what is described as a stunning turnaround . Premature declarations of al Qaeda s demise, Scheuer thinks, may be intended to assure Americans that al Qaeda is beaten if in the next few months it becomes necessary for US forces to attack Iran . Wherever the truth may lie, the Kennedy School graduates of 2008 will be remembered as the generation shaped by the long war.
Iason Athanasiadis (www.iason.ws) is currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and covered Iran for the international press from 2004 to 2007. This abridged article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews). The full text can be found at www.guardian.co.uk.
