Financial Times Editorial Comment: Time is short to halt spread of Jihadism

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Time is short to halt spread of Jihadism
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: May 24 2007 22:09 | Last updated: May 24 2007 22:09


It was perfectly forseeable, and indeed predicted, that the US-led invasion of Iraq, far from striking a decisive blow against terrorism, would proliferate militant Islamism all over the Arab and Muslim worlds, from where a new generation of jihadis would strike into Europe and the west. The roll-call of atrocities, from Casablanca to Istanbul, Bali to Mumbai, Riyadh to Amman, London to Madrid, is bloody indeed. Now, however, jihadi extremism is sprouting like poisonous mushrooms in the darkness enveloping the Middle East.

It is not just that all America’s enemies – al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas – have been strengthened by the policies of the US and its allies. The totalitarian jihadism peddled by Osama bin Laden and his growing following is emerging in new chapters all over the Middle East, including in places it has never before been seen.

Iraq itself, jihadi-free until the invasion, became a magnet for cadres now skilled in the urban terrorism favoured by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mr bin Laden’s strategist. These methods are being used with deadly effect in Afghanistan by the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

But every bit as alarming is what is going on outside these theatres of war. Virulent jihadism – not necessarily linked to but inspired by al-Qaeda – seems to be seeping out of Arab soil almost everywhere. It is spreading into Gaza and northern Lebanon, into Iraqi Kurdistan (and south-eastern Turkey), into Jordan, Yemen and across north Africa. The region’s political immune system, such as it was, is collapsing.

The Bush administration’s bungling use of disproportionate and misdirected force in Iraq has been immensely pernicious: it might as well have taken a hammer to a ball of mercury. So too is the Middle Eastern habit of dabbling in religious extremism. Nearly all the region’s regimes, pro- and anti-western, have at some time tried to use Islamist extremists to their advantage; Syria’s links to the jihadis fighting the Lebanese army in Tripoli is but the latest example.

These groups cannot, ultimately, be directed. Nor can they be deterred. They must be isolated and crushed. That first requires a diplomatic offensive that wins legitimacy and a broad alliance for stability.

The two main needs are obvious. There will be no stability without enlisting Iran’s power in the region. A return to relying on Sunni strongmen alone (in Riyadh, Cairo and Amman) will fail. There will be no stability – or legitimacy – without a concerted effort to tackle the region’s unresolved conflicts, beginning with Palestine. Time is short.