By Jibrin Bala Jibrin
Over thr centuries wars on terrors have been fought,downplaying not the terrors of wars. War itself is terror, imagine it being fought on terror would make one shudder the kind of despicable atrocities that would be committed there-in.
Fighting war is keeping peace, so wars have been fought for different purposes, food, water sources, natural resources, freedom, socio-political ideology as well as security.
Today the perverse kind of war we hear is called “War on Terror”. The term saw first usage by former United State’s President, George W. Bush, in 2011 to situate, albeit emotionally the response they (US) intended to give against groups and countries who carried out the September 11, 2001 attack on them, alongside their allies which they called “Coalition of the willing” a coercive term convalescent-like. Wars of terror that illicit today’s “War on Terror” have been fought through human history; alas unimaginable acts must have been carried out by all parties depending on scales; even today’s proponents of the war on terror, the United States, is equally guilty of terrorist acts. If not, what do you call B52’s carpet bombings of the North Vietnamese jungles and territories? The so called war on terror is effectively perception of whoever happens to be attacked by other states or non-states actors. On the flip side of the coin as well, those who carry out terrorist acts against others could feel that they are responding to earlier terrorist acts carried out against them first by the party/parties they are attacking now, so response is their own prerogative.
Terrorist attack is a response to bad deeds, bad policies and unmeasured acts of infringements on other people’s humanity.
Conversely, we live in a world where the US coerces, cajole, blackmail, subtly threaten other nations to do its wills. Other nations of the world need one thing or the other from it, if not for anything, their economy; ask the Chinese, they know better.
The war on terror is a United States’ theme to silence all military, socio-economic and political opposition against their wish to dominate the world. Uninfluenced rather, all countries involved in this war had their local and peculiar wars which they wouldn’t have to refer to as war on terror but “War Reflective” meaning, wars according to how you treat others in peculiarity of your political, security and geo-strategic policies and how other states and non-state actors treat you back against their accepted ways of self determination and survival.
Now, what do you call Saudi’s war of aggression against the Yemenis, or even Turkey’s involvement in Syrian civil war? Should sovereign states conduct air strikes thousands of kilometers away from their borders, against another sovereign state,who is fighting and containing non-state actors who use terror tactic? What shall we call Sudan’s involvement in Yemen’s war? The Sudanis would say they are a part of the Arab League Organization but aren’t they conducting unjust war of terror against their Dafurian compatriots? The Israelis blockade of the PalestiniPalestinilandan land, sea and air is fighting war on terror; where is the moral conscience of the world when women, children and the sick constitute 70% of the population of the blockaded sliver? Certainly Saudi’s war on Yemen is called war on terror too, but what can Arab poorest country do to Arab’s richest? Ironically the richest country in the Arab world is conducting a brutal war on the poorest Arab country, under the guise of war on terror.
When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization provided troops for International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan after US operation enduring freedom in 2001, didn’t they know that they committed to cleaning the exigencies of the US? Thatthey accepted someone else’s definition of who and what terror is? That they could do better by defining by their own national standard who is their enemy and what terror is, than towing sheepishly to the US whims and caprices?
In Iraq as well in 2003, NATO members contributed resources for stabilization of a country and war they didn’t declare and fight, didn’t serve their interest remotely, what do we call this kind of condensation? Politics, scam or blind kowtowing?
Interestingly, the war on terror over Gaddafi’s Libya after the Arab spring revolts in 2011would also be termed war on terror; where is the terror in trying to keep a country that has descended into chaos? Clearly, what Iraq, Libya and Syria have in common is oil and oil is world’s currency. Currency for those who do not have and live currency for those who do; now those who have most trade it to balance their economy for what they do not have, and those who do not have need it to run the wheels of their economy.
Like this, it is a currency of stability, a currency that must be sought after for a nation’s survival, the bottomline is oil is a global currency of stability and disability, the driver of human existence. Oil is a determiner in global politics and the US seeking to perpetuate their Unipolarism needs oil; wonder why Iran keeps appearing on its list of rogue states because US couldn’t get to control a country with the second largest proven oil reserve.
Iran’s longtime conflict with America was not about much trumpeted fear of acquisition of nuclear weapons and protection of their ‘golden allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia, but oil. For them, Iran is too precious to be left under Russia’s sphere of influence. Here lies the scam in ear on terror, if not, the assassination of the Iranian Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, Kaseem Soleimani on January 3rd 2020, same man they have to thank for saving their ass in the defeat of ISIS/ISIL in Iraq by 2014, a country they purportedly invaded on the pretext of putting a stop to terror, yet they couldn’t save it from imminent collapse and takeover under the offensive of the extremists, terrorists and fundamentals. Should you take out your helper and ‘defeater’ of the terrorist you were purported to be fighting for decades, when you yourself couldn’t? You are not fighting a terror war; you are the terrorist for taking out a fighter of terrorism you created and could no longer control.
Jibrin Bala Jibrin,
Is a Teacher, Foreign Affairs and Military Analyst.