Feeding the Fire of Terrorism

A favorite saying about the merits of being a funeral director is that 'they never run out of product' ...

It goes without saying that their counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan are doing very well in recent times.

Ironically, the same saying --- with slight modifications --- has also proven to be accurate in the recruitment of extremists for violent activities. However, rather than being inevitable, this product is nurtured by factors which are totally avoidable.

Patrick Cockburn is an award-winning journalist and author who has reported extensively from Iraq, Afghanistan and Jordan. Recently, in London's Independent newspaper, he explained how the 'war on terror' has fuelled resentment of the West and brought new levels of death and destruction:

I have spent most of my time since 2001 in Afghanistan and Iraq. The reason for the rise of radical Islam is foreign occupation. Iraq had a secular tradition. Fanatical Islamic groups made little headway under Saddam Hussein not only because he persecuted them but because they had little popular support.

But the five million-strong Sunni community in Iraq almost entirely supported armed resistance to the US occupation. Fanatical Islamic groups were for the first time operating in a friendly environment.

At one moment in the past year the many Sunni insurgent groups debated whether they should try to hammer out a common platform. They eventually decided that their differences were too deep for unity on most issues but they were all agreed on opposition to the occupation and they concluded this was sufficient to hold them together.

One of the most extraordinary aspects of Tony Blair's analysis of militant Islam is his blindness to the extent to which foreign invasion and occupation has radicalised the region and legitimised militant Islam. For instance this weekend a group of Palestinian students in Jerusalem were debating the impact of the war in Lebanon on Palestinian fortunes. The issue which most interested them was the reason why Hizbollah was able to withstand Israeli attacks compared with the failure of secular nationalist movements such as Fatah, led by Yasser Arafat for so many years.

Across the Middle East secularist and nationalist regimes are being discredited by the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. Most governments in the region are corrupt patronage machines backed by brutal security services. They are close to the US but have little influence over it. All are becoming unstable in a way not seen since the 1960s.

The attack by a lone gunman in Jordan holds another dangerous message. At the end of 2001 I was able to stroll through the streets of Kabul and Kandahar without fear of being attacked. I drove between the two cities in a taxi. The same was true in Baghdad under Saddam Hussein and during the first months of the occupation. In 2003 I drove down to Basra in southern Iraq and up to Mosul in the far north without incident.

If I tried to repeat any of these journeys in Iraq or Afghanistan today I would certainly be killed. The rest of the Middle East is becoming more dangerous by the day.

The real reason of the increasing violence in the Middle East is the return to imperial control and foreign occupation half a century after the European colonial empires were broken up. This is the fuel for Islamic militancy. This is why fanatical but isolated Islamic groups can suddenly win broader support. Governments allied to the US and Britain have no legitimacy. The attempts by America and Britain to crush Islamic militancy across the Middle East are making sure it will become stronger.