Here’s two little tidbits for y’all, in case you were doubting the efforts of the US and its allies to date.
Arab League head demands weapons free Middle East
Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa called for all Middle East leaders to commit their nations to a WMD- and nuclear-free future.
“Security in the Middle East depends on an agreement among all members of that region to build a zone free of WMD (weapons of mass destruction), nuclear weapons, as well as other types of those destructive weapons,” Mussa said during a visit to Madrid.
“If there is an exception to the rule, the whole work would be useless. All countries should adhere to the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and the only country in the region that has not joined is Israel.
“All countries should commit themselves not to develop nuclear weapons. All countries with no exception should be party to this,” Mussa insisted.
“If one country is allowed to have those weapons … it won’t work, because we feel threatened by all WMD coming from whatever direction. We find no reason, no logic, for us to accept that all countries join the NPT with the exception of one,” Mussa said.
“One exception will open the doors for an arms race. If not today, it will be tomorrow,” Mussa concluded, explicitly including North Africa, Iran and Turkey in his vision for a weapons-free region.
This move is assuredly a result of the recent diplomacy by Libya and the subsequent rewards the country has gained. Libya’s move was just as assuredly a response to the demise of Saddam Hussein’s dastardly hold on Iraq.
Much good could come from this call to the Arab League, but it could all be made worthless if a similar move by Israel ever becomes a stipulation.
Al Qaeda ‘To Disintegrate’ in 2 Years – UK Adviser
Al Qaeda will begin to disintegrate within two years as its various factions start to squabble and militants return to their local roots, a senior British parliamentary adviser predicted on Wednesday.
Professor Michael Clarke, a specialist adviser to lawmakers on the House of Commons defense committee, said the consequence would be that the security services would be able to win the “war on terror” as the group’s structure fell apart.
“I think (cracks) are going to start to appear in the next 12 months to two years,” he told Reuters at a security conference in London.
“It’s going to start to fragment and split up,” he said.
Clarke said he envisaged the network breaking down into smaller, disparate cells which would be more easily infiltrated and dealt with, bringing an end to the group’s ability to carry out major attacks along the lines of the Sept. 11 attacks
“Terrorism will go back to being about more local issues. It will be reduced to a level which people can live with,” he said.
Al Qaeda’s pyramid structure — with Osama bin Laden and about 30 associates at its head spreading out to a loose franchise of affiliated networks — would begin to prove a major weakness when it was once a strength, he said.
Groups associated with al Qaeda across the world, such as those in southeast Asia, would start to pursue their local agendas, he added.
Clarke pointed to Iraq, where Baathist supporters of deposed president Saddam Hussein were fighting alongside foreign Jihadists linked to al Qaeda although the groups had nothing in common.
Ultimately the Baathists would go their own way and pyramid would be weakened.
Clarke noted that even association with bin Laden’s network had proved damaging to the cause of other militants such as Chechen separatists.
Clarke, director of the International Policy Institute at London’s King’s College, said this would be fueled further as the “glamour” surrounding bin Laden started to wear off and political in-fighting took hold.
“Whenever you get a general movement, people will vie for prominence and that’s what I think is the next stage,” he said.
He said a major failing of al Qaeda was its complete misunderstanding of western society and the belief it could terrorize governments into achieving their aims.
“They are not going to frighten Western society out of policies, they are not going to bring down the House of Saud, their first real objective, by terrorism,” he said.
“They can cause great inconvenience but they can’t damage them in the way they think they can.”
While I agree with and find hope in much of this assessment, I have a fundamental problem with the following portion:
“Terrorism will go back to being about more local issues. It will be reduced to a level which people can live with,” he said.
The war against Islamist terror is not a war against al Qaeda exclusively, nor has it ever been. For it to be so would be folly. The disintegration of al Qaeda would truly be a great victory, and it may lead to eventual success, but the war against the Islamist bastards ain’t over until the atmosphere that allowed the likes of Osama bin Laden to gather such a following is gone. That will not happen until the world of Islam sees a major cultural shift. That is the hope of President Bush’s shining Arab city on the hill that Iraq could become.